Flashpoint Baltic Flight Stands

I've been umm-ing and arr-ing over the best way to base the 1/600th scale aircraft for this project for a long time, which is one of the reasons it hasn't got very far off the ground. Today I bit the proverbial bullet and adopted an approach that I'd previously devised for use with 1/285th scale planes for Bag the Hun 2, although I had yet to give it a proper go. 

This was intended to replace Raiden Miniatures resin and metal stands that are now really expensive and not easy to get hold of. I planned to use a combination of  3mm laser cut hexes, 40mm panel pins and 6mm dice frames. The aircraft would be drilled and the panel pins glued in place as an alternative to using mini-magnets and to match the basing method that I've used for the rest of my Bag the Hun models.

For the Target Locked On! rules you can use any shape of base but I've decided to go with the 3mm laser cut hexes, as I already had them, along with the 6mm dice frames which I'm using to indicate altitude, just like you do with Bag the Hun 2. I ditched the mini-magnet option, as it's a bit too fiddly. The panel pins were also too crude to use and so I swapped them for some 40mm wire spears with the tips cut off using a pair of pliers.

These were attached to the bases with superglue after drilling a hole in the centre of the hex to fit the wire into. A corresponding hole was drilled into the underside of the model and it was then superglued to the top of the wire. This was tricky as the alloy used by Oddzial Osmy is very hard and can be a bit brittle, making it difficult to drill by hand. I may well try using my Dremel instead if I can avoid drilling all the way through the casting?

Anyway, the experimental base that I assembled seems to work fine, once the superglue had time to cure in the cold temperature of my garage workbench. I've now based two Russian Federation Su27 Flankers and a single F16 for the Royal Norwegian Air Force, which will be followed by a second shortly. The F16 was easy to attach to the stand as the wing section is separate, so can be pre-drilled.

I think these bases will work well for the Flashpoint Baltic project and will make the models far more resilient to some handling, whilst easing the job of painting by providing a convenient handle with which to hold them. I'll texture and paint the bases too, using some modelling paste to replicate the terrain and a paint scheme to match the 4' x 4' geomorphic scenery that I'm planning to build for the project.