Flight Stands

[acctingman]

Are there any decent reasonable priced flight stands out there for 1/300 gaming where you can have the plane bank/dive? Any DIY tutorials out there to make your own?

[donglewwe]

DIY
I use a ring magnet (on model) and a ball bearing (on stand) that works well enough on 1/600 stuff...dunno how it would hold up with bigger (I assume metal?) models, though.
https://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss1 ... erside.jpg

For my 1/300 WW1 stuff I made bent-wire gimbals that friction-fit into tubing - fiddly, for sure, but they work.
https://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss1 ... 1hee0z.jpg

[acctingman]

What did you use for the stand itself? What material was the base?

Thanks for sharing

[donglewwe]

https://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss1 ... twkv7j.jpg

The base is a plumber's nut (1.25") which has a recess in the bottom that nicely fits the base of an elevator bolt onto which is threaded a tee nut into which an antenna is pressed - can you guess I spend too much time loitering in a hardware store? ; )

A magnet on the bottom holds the thing together as well as provide stability since my boards have a thin sheet of metal on them.

The base serves as a 0-9 speedometer (with a washer-pointer) or other scale (0-6 overlay shown) as rules require. I use the fixed base of the antenna as another scale (with color-coded clips), and the use of magnetic markers to indicate various game conditions/stats. Bookkeeping is a drag on play, imo, and the more that can be tracked with the model itself the better - especially for solo play, which I do a lot of.

[SteveBurt]

I made my own. Block of MDF with a wire pin. Wire pin in plane. Thin aluminium tube of varying lengths between them; the pins go in the end of the tube. The backs of the MDF blocks have steel paper to stick on veteran/rookie/ace pilot names on magnetic labels. The tops are colour coded by section and have numbers for each plane
https://i.imgur.com/PW4V8ds.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/MG6EFWZ.jpg