Small Scale Military Headquarters

Worked on some new aircraft displays at the Tri-State Warbird Museum today.

We have a pair of simulators that players can buy minutes to either fly solo or dogfight with the other player. Over the top of the sims we wanted a dogfight display so I moved the BF-109G trailing smoke with a chewed up rudder and the pilot having popped the hood and starting to bail out with the victorious P-51 breaking off after delivering the fatal blow. I had to lengthen the smoke trail from its previous location.

In the second hanger we have our CV-12 Hornet (Essex Class) display in conjuntion with our long association with both the Doolittle Raiders and the first Hornet CV-8 (Yorktown class) and the Hornet Association and our local combat Vets from the Hornet.

I did a custom 21st C Avenger to represent plane 82 assigned to our very own Lt.JG. Ken Glass, TBF pilot and combat veteran in 1944. I have had the honor of associating with this gentleman through our Museum.

Our other Hornet Vet., Lt.JG. Don Brandt flew F6F Hellcats off the Hornet and was shot down by Japanese AA and was saved by a daring Submarine rescue in enemy waters. We have a stock BBI Helcat hanging that I will mod into Don's plane in the future. These two gentlemen are true American treasures and I am blessed to be able to associate with them.

Very nice!
Razor

That looks great and the pilot bailing out is very cool!

I love action displays with 1:18th - the dogfight looks great.

Excellent dogfight scenary!
How did you make the smoke???
Would love a flightdeck scenary with an Avenger landing...
But great, thank you!

granch wrote:Excellent dogfight scenary!
How did you make the smoke???
Would love a flightdeck scenary with an Avenger landing...
But great, thank you!

The smoke represents a couple of years worth of my dog shreading her stuffed pet toys from the Dollar Store. I collect the stuffing and save it in a bag. For this display, various sized clumps of the stuff is worked down a long stiff wire like meat on a skewer. They are naturally irregular which is good as that's kinda how smoke comes out though I work with it to get an effect I'm after. I've tried cotton balls but they look like marshmallows on a stick. Insulation is nasty to work with and tends to have a yellowish look. The stuffing is by far the best and easiest. You can actually buy bags of the stuff if you don't have a source like mine.

The stuffing makes great 3-D clouds too.

Great job, looks fantastic!

Very cool!

The 'goin down' 190 is fantastic! Great work!

granch wrote:Excellent dogfight scenary!
How did you make the smoke???
Would love a flightdeck scenary with an Avenger landing...
But great, thank you!

Here's an application of the same material used for the smoke being used for clouds. Local Veteran and 90 year old Volunteer at the Museum, Charlie Nau, has his own display. He served as a radar operator in B-29s. The scene in the display depicts a diecast B-29 bombing through cloud cover to a target below of a scratch-built enemy factory. The display is interactive. The curved bars on the back wall are lights which flash in sequence down and then back up when a button is pushed to represent the radar beam going to the ground and returning to the plane. There is also a video screen that shows actual radar sweeps from missions (just visable at the bottom of the first picture). I guess you have to accept that he just closed the bombay doors as you can just make out the last of the stick of bombs that have penatrated the cloud layer. Some of the stuffings are a gray-green color and made good shadowed bottom layers for the clouds. The clouds are stretched over and through a wire grid.

That's very impressive and realistic looking. Its giving me some Ideas for a mixed scale diorama...

...something like this

Just waiting for that 229 to swoop down on those unsuspecting bombers

This is the representation of a strategic target the B-29 above the clouds is bombing. I scratch built it and purposely over marked the Japanese decals to be sure the general public understood what the scenerio was about. It is yet another application of the same fiber used this time for smoke stack smoke.

Awesome display !!! Now ya need to do one of Hartmann's taking out 4 Stangs covering 17's over Rumania in one engagement in June of '44....Jackson