I have in my eternal lead mountain a couple of larger flyers. A couple are the Forge World Thunderhawks, one is that size but made of metal.

Initially I was thinking of simply having them glued with brass rod to a stable base. I have been saving off cuts of pewter to glue to the base to weigh it down a bit. I think for the resin Thunderhawks that might be sufficient but the chunky metal landing craft affairs are so big and heavy that I think they'll bend on 1.5mm rod really easily.

I thought I'd pick your collective brains and ask if anyone had a solution to making a more resilient flying stand, esp. for heavy and larger models.

One thought I had was to pin it in two places or to have it leaning on a piece of scenery but that might spoil the illusion of it flying rather than crashing!

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Ben Sibbald

Personal & Wargaming Blog: http://www.theancienttrack.blogspot.co.uk

EPIC WIP: Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Eldar

Clear acrylic rod of varying thickness (I have some that's 1cm across somewhere I think) is what I'll be using when I eventually get round to doing mine. I might magnetise them, but drill a hole in the underside of the ship so that both magnets on top of each other sit flush to the underneath plate of the craft so that they're not visible from the side. One advantage of this is that you can model the flying stand much higher than standard if you like and can vary the height a lot from model to model. You can also cut the acrylic rod at an angle to point a model a bit downwards or upwards rather than just horizontal.

I used clear acrylic rod on a Vulture I painted many years ago:

Wow, that's a great result, there!

I think that's bigger than my little pin vice could do, heh, guess I need to look at a proper dremel or something.

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Ben Sibbald

Personal & Wargaming Blog: http://www.theancienttrack.blogspot.co.uk

EPIC WIP: Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Eldar

I use a 50 or 60mm base for flyers with a rod glued in, not weighted and it remains well ballanced.

Some folks add ball bearings to the underside of bases to counter balance the weight if the stand is a small diameter compaired to the model.

I recommend the Hawk Wargames widget system combined with standard GW flying bases.

The widgets are little soft plastic things which you glue to your model. They then fit tightly over the top of the base: they're secure when being moved on the table, and come off very easily when you want to pack them away.

I've used them for Epic-scale flyers of all sizes, as well as large metal BFG ships. One widget will support the weight of an Imperial Navy battleship very nicely.

They're also very cheap!

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Seconding the recommendation on widgets, they're excellent for just about every application I've turned them to from large Resin stuff (FSA battleships), metal SM Battle Barges, metal fighta bommers and everything in between.

+1 for the widgets. Used to use magnets, but I've been converted.

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