Thursday, October 8, 2009

Flight Stands for 1/600 Aircraft

I recently decided to conduct all of my air battles for the Gambusian Campaign using 1/600 aircraft. There are only two manufacturers out there, but they are really covering a lot of modern aircraft. After experimenting with different ways of mounting them on stands, I came across one that I think will work well using LEGOs. I sort of thought about this method awhile ago, but then came across a thread on TMP where a person explained his technique. Below is what I ended up using:



I ordered from the LEGO "pick-a-brick" online shop where you can order individual pieces (A-C). For the posts, I use clear cylindrical LEGO bricks (B & C). One brick has a rare earth magnet stuck in that happened to be the same diameter as the hole at the top of the cylinder (C). This brick is to hold the airplane to the stand. To glue in the magnet, I tried superglue formulated for car windows, but it frosted up the brick the same way normal superglue does. I ended up using a while glue that claimed to dry clear. It did. The airplane also has a rare earth magnet on it that I glued on using superglue (D). Make sure you roughen the spot on the airplane where you are to glue down the magnet. It helps hold it a lot. The base of the stand (A) is a parabolic disk that you can get from LEGO. There are different sizes, the larger size works the best. The result looks like this:



The cylinders come in several different colors and in a transparent blue as well. They can pop on and off fairly easily if you play a game were changes in altitude is necessary. I think the base I use is large enough to accomodate larger planes like bomber. !/600 scale aircraft are not all that heavy! I need to order more bricks and bases and figure out what to use to make air-to-air missiles that are flying to their target.

4 comments:

  1. I came upon your site via The Miniatures Page. What specific type of parabolic disk did you use for the base? Do you think it would work for 1/300 aircraft?

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  2. Jonathan,

    Sorry about the slow response to your comment. I used the parabolic reflector 24x6.4 transparent (element ID# 4186513). It is on page 8 of the "Plates, Special category. It MIGHT work for 1/300, but if you go down to a little further, there is the Parabolic reflector 048. The one is much bigger, and although not transparent (it looks like a radar dish), I'll bet it will support just about any 1/300 scale plane.

    Chris

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  3. What is the size of the magnets you are using?

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  4. It’s a nice idea to use LEGOs for this. I think blue might be a good color for the cylinders.

    -Avionics testers | AvionTEq

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