Need 1/48 tarmac/runway/pad

I did fine a site where I could print them off, but how would I make that look realistic and not 2d? I was hoping for 3-d

I have used 72nd ones of these in the past and never been happy with them. I even bought one recently with printed grass on it, looks awful.

Rather than going through the hassle of trying to improve one. have you thought about doing your own. I did a tut a few months back on making aircraft bases, hopefully you might find it useful.

cs.finescale.com/.../154940.aspx

For 48th scale you might want something rougher than cardboard, maybe sandpaper but I am not sure what Grit you would need. You can paint your own markings using a mask, I know a lot of modern airfields have markings of some sort.

Well, two suggestions.  I'm just working on Academy's phantom at the moment, and I've bought a carrier deck from Hannants.co.uk for it.   When building my own bases, I often start with those cheapo board canvases that painters use, nice and stiff, pre coated in gesso.  I usually find them from small (5x6) to large (12 x 14)  From there, I use dry wall mud or acrylic medium (both the board and medium I find at a local art store) build up terrain and then paint up the base.  After that, it's just a matter of playing around to accomplish what you want.  Dry wall mud is a lot easier to texture, but a lot easier to beat up and chip.  The carrier deck I got from Hannants was quite large, I'm thinking of a diorama of two aircraft off the Midway for it, it's that large.  www.hannants.co.uk/.../FHP48107B, www.hannants.co.uk/.../HD2005 (that's the one I have), www.hannants.co.uk/.../SKW48020.

Hope it helps, any questions on building your own, you can write and I can walk you through some of my techniques, pretty easy and decent results.

Check out the 3-Wire Design display bases. They are available form www.flyingmule.com. They are very well done.

Tom

Tom those look perfect. Are they textured at all? like are the grooves in the concrete actually there or is it just printed extremely well?

There is no texture, they are just very well printed.

Tom

Make the base the size you need using plaster.  You can control the amount of texture, and scribe lines in the tarmac signifying the seams, Small gentle ridges of putty painted black for tar, paint the tarmac black and apply a light, very thin white wash until you start seeing "aged concrete".

Just a thought.,

Or, you could do it this way:  cs.finescale.com/.../154940.aspx

Maybe I am overthinking it, but I could have sworn that tramacs were flat....

If you are just wanting to add a little texture, coat the printouts with hodge podge or something and tab it with a paper towel or a rag to rough it up.  Spray with matte when done, should give you a sufficient textures surface.

There is a product (Mig or Ak) that is a spreadable tarmac.

Alternately a cold-pressed "crescent" board will have about the right texture with a good coat of craft paint.

Asphault (often called Tarmac, a contraction of tar MacAdam) is a gravel aggregate coated in heated bithumenous tar which adheres the material together when it cools.  It's a black to brown-black color which can fade to a dark gray. 

Tar MacAdam is a process where a compressed gravel subgrade is coarted in a hot liquid tar.  While still hot and wet a wear layer of fine gravel is evenly spread over the road surface.  Final color depends on the color of the wear layer gravel.

How the tradition of referring to aviation aprons as tarmac got started is not entirely clear.  Tarmac, proper would be a horrible FOD pavement.  Asphault spreads easily and is very forgiving pavement, but only up to certain traffic loads.  Which is why most modern air fields use concrete for being more economical for carrying large loads--6" of 6000 psi concrete is far cheaper than 12" of layered asphault.  Asphault installed south of about 33ºN has an issue with losing some of its compression strength, too.