Aires

1/72 Lancaster Wheels and Paint Masks For the Revell of Germany kit

Stock Number: 7204

Reviewed By  John Ratzenberger, IPMS# 40196

MSRP: $7.45 Website: www.aires.cz These resin main wheels, from Aires, are for the Revell of Germany 1/72 Lancaster. Although highly praised for its detail, there are a couple issues -- the lack of wing dihedral and the over-sized wheels. The Revell wheels are not weighted, the Aires ones are. The Aires wheels are perfectly molded with crisp detail. The pour block attaches under the weighted portion of the tire and is easy to cut off with no damage to wheel detail. A light sanding and you have a great wheel. Here you can see the wheels from the 3 mainstream 1/72 Lancasters -- Airfix, Hasegawa, and Revell -- and the Aires tire. Note the Aires and Hasegawa wheels are virtually identical in size and profile, and are weighted. The Airfix tire is slightly larger in diameter, similar in profile, but unweighted. The Revell tire is much larger in diameter and width, different in profile, and un-weighted. I do not have the dimensions of a Lancaster tire -- I've a small shelf of references on the aircraft but none provide tire size. I can only fall back on photo comparisons to say "I think" Revell got the tire wrong. I also "think" that although the real answer might fall somewhere between the Airfix and the Hasegawa/Aires wheels, any of them are acceptable. Aires provide a mask for painting the wheels. The mask is just a ring that covers the slanted cooling hole piece of the hub, not the whole hub. Instructions are to spray the hubs, apply the masks, cover the rest of the hubs in masking fluid, then spray the tires. I had a hard time getting the masks centered properly and then getting them to stick firmly in place. I ended up not using them -- it could just be me. Unfortunately, as the following photos show, the Aires wheels will not be a drop-in as the Revell main gear, wide enough for the Revell wheels, is too wide for the Aires wheels without some sort of modification.

I'm not sure what to say. They are nice wheels, certainly better than the Revell wheels, but to use them won't be easy. I think they might have done better to make them a bit overscale to take up some of the space between the kit gear legs. Nonetheless, they look nice on Airfix's venerable G-for-George. The left (near) wheel is Aires, the right (far) is the Airfix wheel. Mine will go into a York conversion currently on the bench - if I wasn't so far behind you might have had a peek. So, I guess I'd have to say these are recommended for the Airfix kit, even though they aren't meant for it, and give a limited recommendation for the intended Revell kit, if you can put in the effort to make them look right mounted in the gear. My sincere thanks to Aires for the review sample and to IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it.