If You Can't Get It On eBay, You Don't Need It

Aug 16, 2013 10:13

Yours truly faking painting. 

Note the beverage of the gods.

WWII Planes Way way back in ancient history... ok, more like in 2003, I wrote my own experimental set of air war rules. Wings of War wasn't out and I wasn't happy with any of the rulesets I had gathered for the purpose. We might get back to the rules someday, but what I really wanted to talk about was the equipment.

Getting the models was easy enough and I could have put them on standard plastic flight bases like I had already done with my numerous spaceships. You know the ones that always break and aren't very stable with any larger models?

Well, I saw the need for better flight bases but I couldn't locate any. At least not for a price I was willing to pay, I can't quite recall the details. So I decided to make my own.

WWII Planes I really wanted to make telescopic flight bases, but I couldn't locate cheap telescopic antennas anywhere. So I made these prototypes with 2mm wire, alligator clips ripped from cheap test cables and some heavy duty square washers for weight. The stand is maybe 12" high for real flying. As you can see from the picture, the brightly colored clip covers should have been removed. I glued map pins on the planes for the clips to, well, clip (neodymium magnets were not easily available back then).

We had a few playtest sessions but then the rules, the planes and the stands were buried in the gaming pile for years... until today.

My new interest in 1:1200 scale ships brought about an interest in the old microscale planes as well. I was thinking maybe I could do a game about anti-shipping attacks. I'm all for abstraction in rules, but with planes doing torpedo runs you really need two height levels. So I was thinking I would make another set of stands, half-height maybe, for low flying planes.

WWII Planes But the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that I should redo the flight stands completely. So I fired up eBay and quickly located several suppliers of reasonably priced telescopic antennas and orderd a few for prototyping. And while I was at it, I also ordered a bunch of alligator clips so I wouldn't need to destroy another set of test cables.

While magnets are nice, the alligator clips can hold the planes at an angle. As I'm not entirely set on any rules yet, this might be an issue and I don't want to limit myself.

Let's see what happens with that.

It feels a bit weird ordering stuff like this from across the globe. While I admit it's partly a price and convenience issue (it's far easier to shop online than finding an non-overpriced parking spot on a trip downtown), for me it's mostly a question of availability. Much of this stuff I just can't find locally, for any price.

maxxon


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