MikroMir Miles Aerovan

The Miles Aerovan is one of those aircraft types that I never thought we would see as an injection molded kit. Miles kits (with the possible exception of the Master) are rather thin on the ground, except for the occasional resin kit. So I was very happy when MikroMir announced that they were doing this in their 2018 programme.

Now, understand, I knew they were a relatively new company, and a thoroughly short-run one at that. So there would be fit and alignment issues. And this kit fulfilled every concern I had on that subject. Unfortunately, this was squarely in my autumnal bout of construction frustration, which made eternal adjustment to individual pieces unlikely. I usually just crammed them together and hoped for the best.

One of the things I like about MikroMir kits is that they appear to consider the modeler when putting together their kits. Hence the masking medium that is included for all cockpit and passenger window transparencies. However... The medium they used, which is basically the sort of white stickers you would use for price tags or labels, is horrible, horrible stuff. It doesn’t conform to curves. It cannot be removed (without huge effort) once it is in place. It leaves more gunk behind than I have ever seen on a masking medium. It took me a long time, scrubbing with WD-40, to get even most of the residue cleaned off. And by then I had pushed in two of the passenger windows, which means I would have to replace them with Kristal Kleer, making them visibly different than the other windows on the fuselage. My suggestion? Take the white masks off off the backing sheet and use them as templates to make Kabuki tape replacements. You will be a much happier modeler if you do. Would something like Goo-gone have been a better choice for removing the gunk? It’s a moot point, since I don’t own any Goo-gone. If you have some, give it a try and let me know if it worked better.

The kit gives a number of markings options. I didn’t want a military one (if I have a commercial or civil option, I will use that every time). I was initially attracted to the blue and silver option, but by the time I got to that point I was just ready to be done with the thing, and the overall White paint job seemed the way to go. That resulted in markings for Sivewright Airways, a local Brit airline. The decals performed well, though they did threaten to break up a bit after application. Still, most of them behaved well if sufficient water was there to float them into place.

Plus I lost one of the props in all the Christmas preparations and had to substitute a pair of cut-down Aeroclub two-bladers I’ve had in my spares box since the dawn of time. This is why we hoard things.

Not one of my best, but they make it on the blog whether good, bad, or indifferent. This is, alas, one of the indifferent ones.

This is completed aircraft #502 (19 aircraft, 1 ordnance, 8 vehicles for the year 2018), finished in December of 2018.