AIRCRAFT: In 1939 the Russian designers Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich started design of a single-seat fighter plane under the designation I-61. The prototype flew in April 1940 and became the MiG-1, but it quickly became obvious that it was far less than perfect and work began on an improved version. This was known as the I-200 and first flew in 1941, becoming the MiG-3 when it was accepted for service with the VVS (ie Voyenno-Vozdushne Sily, the Soviet Army Air Forces). A slightly improved version also came out with the nose extended by about 15cm, possibly to improve the centre of gravity. In case you’re wondering what happened to the MiG-2, there never was one — Russian fighter aircraft are always given the odd numbers, and non-fighters are given even numbers. That’s why we have the MiG-15, -17, -19, -21, -23, -25, -27 etc.

KIT PARTS: There are four trees of white plastic parts and one tree of clear parts. Detail is finely engraved with a fairly smooth finish on most of the exterior; this is correct as the aircraft was built mainly of wood. The parts layout diagram for the clear tree seems to show the canopy in 3 pieces, and the instruction sheet indicates the option of a closed or open canopy, but the canopy on the tree is a single "closed" piece only, so if you want it open it will have to be cut.

My first impression on opening the box was that there were a lot of parts, more than I would normally expect from a limited-edition kit. The propeller/boss assembly, for example, comprises 8 parts, and the wing section has a total of about 13 items. The interior looks good, so does the underside, but there are no boxed-in wheel wells, just cut-outs in the wing underside with a complete lack of detail. The canopy looks usable but will need polishing. There is a choice of plastic or rubber tyres, although these are not shown on the instruction sheet, and they are packed in a small sealable plastic bag. One of the first things I did was to put the tree with the clear parts into the bag with the rubber bits for protection.

I checked the dimensions of the parts against the plans published in the July 1998 issue of Scale Aviation Modeler International. A lot of inaccurate plans have been published over the years so try to find something recent that you can trust as a reference. At first glance, the wing shape looks good, with the wheel well cutouts about in the right place and the right shape. The wing-tips on the kit are maybe a little too pointy but this could be corrected. The rear end of the fuselage in side view is almost perfect and the horizontal tail is good, but the front end from the canopy forward looks too shallow and sleek — the drawings show a much beefier looking profile. The canopy shape looks spot-on and the spinner profile looks accurate. See also my comments under the "Versions" heading.

INSTRUCTIONS: The instruction sheet is A4-size folded in the middle to produce four A5 pages. Front page contains a parts tree diagram and a paragraph of something written in Ukrainian. The next two pages show the construction sequence in exploded-view pictorial fashion, with a few colour call-outs in Ukrainian and English. When I build this kit, the first thing I’ll do is blow each page up from A5 to A4 so I can read the small writing and maybe better follow the diagrams. No actual construction sequence is given, just a sometimes-vague indicator of parts location.

The markings diagrams show details for 7 aircraft, but these diagrams are in black & white only with old-fashioned cross-hatching, dots, spots, lines etc to indicate colours. Another page to blow up. Colour names are again in Ukrainian and English, but some of the explanations are in Ukrainian only. Some of the colour names have what could be paint codes below them but I’m not familiar with the coding used (eg Russian Blue Matt has a code of AMT-7, and Dark Green Satin has the code AMT-4 — can anyone help?).

VERSIONS: Only one version given, and here is where you strike a problem. According to the plans by Richard Caruana, the fuselage profile seems closer to the original short-nose version of the aircraft (it’s actually about 2mm short of the short-nose profile but about 4mm short of the lengthened nose), but the upper nose insert detail matches the longer-nose drawing. Consequently, I’m not sure if the version in the kit is the early shorter-nose or the later long-nose variant. Personally, I think I’ll just ignore the problem — I’ve been waiting too long for an affordable 1/48 scale MiG-3 and life is too short.

DECALS: As mentioned earlier, there are markings for 7 aircraft and they all seem to be included on the decal sheet, even though the sheet is only 12cm x 9cm in size. Print quality looks very good with nothing out of register, but there does not seem to be any carrier film on the decal sheet at all. If this sheet is going to be used it may be advisable to give it a coating of gloss varnish first, otherwise try AeroMaster or some other after-market supplier and save yourself the worries.

OVERALL: It would probably have been instructive to compare this kit against the Classic Airframes product, but I don’t have one because it costs $70 in Australia and not all of us are in that income bracket. Still, it should be a pleasurable experience and I’m looking forward to building it (at my current rate of model-building that will be in about the year 2073). Of course, by that time Tamiya will have one on the market . . . .