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Aircraft base


Snowboar

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Hi everyone I’m a newbie modeler ,I was talking to some in the model shop the other day about making a runway base for a spitfire. he told me to make it out of milliput ,the runway would have square sections to scale . Should I make the millionth into tiles or cover the wooden base with a layer and score the tiles in it he also said to do it on an angle thank an advice appreciated 😀👍

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There are loads of different airfield designs, can depend on what sort of scene you want. From busy to ambient.

 

On many scenes I use texture paint (eg. from Tamiya, Vallejo and AK Interactive), sand it to smooth slightly then used a scoring tool and ruler to create realistic concrete slabs. I have even drawn them in with a sharp pencil in 144th

 

 

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This scene was made with desert pigment over a tarmac painted base

 

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For much of WWII, Spitfires would have departed off grass field runways but been surfaced on hard standing.

 

Grass is best done with static grass over a brown painted base, but this can be an expensive outlay. You can get grass matting from model railway suppliers but an applicator lets you make more patchy scenes

 

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In forward airbases, such as the Pacific and Italy, steel matting was used for runway and taxiways. You can find kits for this in many scales.

 

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I recommend browsing the diorama Ready for Inspection section of this forum and looking for aircraft scenes, loads of good inspiration there. Adding figures and vehicles can also add really good atmosphere, depending on what is available in your scale.

 

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19 minutes ago, Snowboar said:

Also I’m was thinking of spraying it different grays and putting washes on it and stick bit of grass between the tiles or sections does this sound like a good way ?rhanks

My first diorama

 

Washes are very good and you can create good looking stains too. Vallejo do a selection of oil spill effects.

 

I like the AK Interactive pencils for making rubber marks.

 

Grass beteeen cracks can be hard to simulate in scale since you need to scale your gaps down too. Can be easy to overegg the dereliction!

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Also have a look at cake stands. Flat foil covered card, they have texture and will take grey primer as a base for further weathering. Sizes/shapes vary.

Use a thick pencil and ruler to mark out the squares. Thin yellow or white painted lines add colour/taxi lines. 

You can also (with practice) draw drains on it with a pencil and get a nice metallic sheen.

Probably best used for 1/48th and larger Aircraft models. The texture is too rough for smaller stuff.

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Hobbycraft sell wooden panels for painting that are around 12" square and ideal for 1/48 scale planes or dioramas. You can use miliput or something like Gallerina modelling paste for surfaces.  If you want tarmac look then I use very fine grade wet/dry paper as a tarmac base :). On this 1/48 Typhoon I just sprayed the base surface grey and drew in the black lines with biro and masked/sprayed the white lines.

 

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The 1/48 scale Stuka uses the same Hobbycraft base but with a commercially available printed card surface.

 

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The bases cost around £10 from Hobbycraft :) and are the perfect size I have found so far for all sorts of scenes, whether aircraft or bigger 1/35 scale AFV dioramas.

 

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If your goal is a modern runway, then there's not even need to use milliput or similar materials, you can simply use plasticard or even cardboard. Of course with the latter it's more difficult to add 3-dimensional features but if you're happy with a flat enough runway it's worth a shot. With plasticard or cardboard you can make individual slabs or just use a single sheet. The 1/72 runway below was made from a single grey cardboard sheet

 

Hawk-46

 

The lines between slabs were scored with a steel tool and then I used black ink to reproduce the filler. I tried to make these lines not too neat, based on observation of the real thing.

The yellow lines were masked and airbrushed while weathering was done mainly with drybrushing. If using water based paints, it can be useful to "seal" the cardboard using a spray clear waterproofing coat (there's plenty of similar stuff in DIY or arts shops). With these it's then safe to use any kind of wash without the risk of damaging the cardboard.

To make the structure of the base, I use cheap picture holders from places like pound shops and similar, removing the clear front and using the lower wooden base as support. Here's a picture showing part of the wooden picture frame

 

Hawk-51

 

Not as neat as some of the great examples shown above but pretty simple to make and very cheap.

For tarmac however I prefer using a fine grade sandpaper sheet, as Matt above explained. Mind, some coarse sheets can also be useful as their texture is quite similar to certain unprepared pavements.

 

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ThT looks amazing think I’ll try the cardboard seen as it’s my first diorama base ,saves me spending loads of money and cocking it up 😀👍👍👍I try ed the milliput and just made a mess there wasn’t enough and couldn’t get it off the grease proof paper neat enough 

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Ended up using mounting board from hobby craft marked the concrete panel with a pen which I used to gough the join lines as the mount board was quit soft primed the did the tonal thing like on planes might be called basing then spray lightly with diff ent greys also I gouged the odd crack then I sprayed some lines for markings then slight spray some gray over to make it look worn the added a oil wash of burnt umber and paynes  grey cleaned Matt varnish also did some slight drag lines on edges of slabs no all of them the added some mud pigment didn’t use much be still had to take most of it off and that was it looked good will post a pic wen I suss out how to send pics 

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  • 1 month later...

I painted some rough greys on hardboard photographed is and used that for a background in PowerPoint building a series of templates for my bases.  The PowerPoint artwork is then printed on sticky labels and that is stuck down to foam board.  Cheap & Cheerful but it works for me.
 

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  • 6 months later...

Yes mdf.  I paint it was a loose mix of white emulsion and some black poster paint.  Lighter & darker areas & streaks all help.  Even a bit of red in there.  A dust over with cheap grey / white / black Poundland cans.  Draw on the concrete panels with a pencil & paint on any markings.  Cheap option & you can go bigger without costing loads.  Mine are often large & thin (5mm?) mdf sheets

 

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