I have now run out of Raiden Miniatures flight stands for my 1/285th scale Bag the Hun projects, although a recent offer of some spare bases from a fellow club member will help me to keep my existing Battle of Britain, North Africa and NW Europe projects up and running. For any new projects including the Blue Swastika Rampant Winter and Continuation War set up, I will have to make my own flight stands and bases, both to save money and due to the fact that Raiden Miniatures will no longer be stocked in the UK by Magister Militum.
As a result, I've been experimenting again with laser cut mdf hexes, 40mm panel pins and 7mm dice frames, in an attempt to scale up the bases that I scratch built for my 1/600th scale Target Locked On! modern aircraft. This seemed to work out fine, although I will need to countersink the head of the panel pin in the base to stop the whole thing wobbling about too much. I did consider adding a washer to the bottom of the base to add some weight and to avoid the counter sinking hassle, but it didn't look right when I mocked it up, so I may have to think of something else?
....back to the workbench!
Hi Jim,
ReplyDeleteDid Magister Militum confirm that they are stopping Raiden to you in an email? I've not seen that anywhere.
Yes they did. He said it was too much hassle importing from the US.
ReplyDeleteok thanks! Saves me a conversation at Derby Worlds today!
ReplyDeleteThe issue was reliability of supply but the castings are also not so great compared with before when Mark was running the business IMHO.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could persuade MM to start their own 1/285th scale range?
ReplyDeletedoubt I'd be giving them enough volume of sales! ;-) Their focus today seemed to be GHQ
ReplyDeleteYep, and their own 1/1200th scale line of models.
ReplyDeleteShame. Still there's Museum and Collectair, so it's not the end of the world just yet.
True. In your opinion, do the Scotia models hold their own vs the Museum ones? (By which I mean, given the choice, if you'd bought Scotia first, would you want to replace them with Museum models, or is the quality difference not worth it?) - Planning to pull the trigger on purchases, but Scotia is only 2/3rds the cost - but I can't tell from internet pics if that saving is one I'd regret. I'll also probably pick up some Tumbling Dice Spits and 109s to use as 3d Bogey markers at the same time, hopefully more interesting than just card (I plan to paint them grey, and perhaps mount 2 to a base to keep it clear which are bogeys and which are spotted planes.)
ReplyDeleteSome of the Scotia models are really nice bit others are a bit rubbish, while all of the Museum ones are lovely, of prone to some dodgy miscasting. I always order a couple of extras to replace the worst ones and avoid lots of filling. Nice idea for the bogey markers..very neat!
ReplyDeleteNot much good to match with the hex based game system, but I use casualty bases with the rotating section to show altitude rather than hits, just added a brass wire (the thicker paperclip from "all good retail outlets"). I printed out some circles with airfix box art on & some pilot head shots from various films for leaders, and printed a ring with the old Battle of Britain map to cover the lasercut casualty wording, they look surprisingly good and are very stable being 30mm across.
ReplyDeleteNice idea!
ReplyDelete