I thought I'd show how to go about making the cheap flight stands that I've designed for air warfare games. They only take a few minutes to put together, are made from easily obtainable bits and are very inexpensive. Including the glue, bases, wire stand and dice frame, I think they are only about 10p per base, so pretty good value. They are also adaptable to whatever rules you are using, so I can do hex bases with one dice frame for Bag the Hun or square bases with a double dice frame for Wings at War, for example. Anyway, here's what you will need:
- 30mm x 3mm Hex Base - available from Warbases or similar
- A 7mm mdf dice frame - optional (as above)
- A 40mm wire stand - I use 40mm wire spears with the tip clipped off.
- A pin vice and drill.
- A pen and ruler.
- Superglue - I use the gel version.
- A 1/600th scale aircraft - e.g. Tumbling Dice Starfighter
Step 1
Assemble the aircraft, cleaning off any flash and adding any components.
Step 2
Mark up the hex base with the ruler and pencil for drilling.
Step 3
Drill at the centre point right through the base, taking care to make the drill angle perpendicular.
Step 4
Glue in the wire stand but be careful to make it flush with the underside of the base to avoid 'wobble'
Step 5
Glue on the dice frame (optional) taking care to line it up with the stand and hex base edge.
Step 6
Drill a matching hole in the underside of the aircraft model about 2mm-3mm deep.
Step 7
Glue the model to the stand, taking care to line it up in the vertical and horizontal.
Step 8
Undercoat with primer ready for painting, otherwise the mdf will soak up the paint.
There's no reason why this wouldn't work with larger scale models in 1/300th or even 1/144th scale and you could make the bases or flight stands any size that you want, for example, 100mm hex bases and 100mm wire stands. In fact, I might just have a go at this, as I have some 100mm tall steel pikes that would be ideal as heavy duty stands for 1/144th scale planes. You could even texture the bases if you wanted to, to represent the in-theatre terrain, or just paint them to match a sky blue hex mat.
Very simple.
Very useful, thanks! Have a lot of 1/700 aircraft and a number of 1/300 to base and paint which I've been reluctant to start for lack of basing direction.
ReplyDeleteI also now stick adhesive magnetic sheet to the bottom, which covers up the wire and means I can store the models in a metal box or on metal sheet in a plastic box.
ReplyDeleteJust come across this - some good ideas & very helpful ! Thank you.
ReplyDelete