What are people using as a base & accs. for 1/32nd scale aircraft dioramas?

Picked up these plain bases fom EBay for £5. Just added a bit of dirt and scatter...took about 10 mins to knock up. The dirt was fixed using white PVA glue which had an unexpected side effect. I thought I'd over done it on a few places but it kinda dried "wet looking" as you can see. Looks like soggy ground.

Bish

Don, the problem with many of the mats I have seen is that they are to uniform, like well kept lawns. There are some new ones out that have bare patches, stone sand so on, but they are damn expensive.

 

My LHSs carry two grass mat styles, one with just a uniform green, the other more mottled with shades of yellow and tan, though they are all uniform height.  One could add taller weeds to the mottled ones, however, and that looks better.  If it is an active field, they probably mow it occasionally.  A crash in a field certainly needs other vegetation.

Bish - that's true, out of the box, or, to say it better, off the roll, those mats look better than a golf course or queens lawn, but you can easily mahe them more realistic by sprinkling on some other grass stuff - static grass, coloured sawdust, almost anything. Spraying a random squiggles of different shades of green also helps a lot. Here's what I made using those techniques in 1/35:

Hope it helps - good luck with your builds and have a nice day

Paweł

Check the model railroading section of your LHS.  They have neat things for ground cover and pavements.  I especially like those mats of grass, though I think they are too fine a texture for 1:32- fine for 1:48 and smaller.  Still, they have various stuff that WILL work in larger scales- just not as handy to apply.  Weeds, flock type grass, gravel, etc.

Bish

panzer, not sure about the edges, as I have only done this in 72nd and I put an edge around the board. But in 32nd I plan on doing it different. For the expansion joints I cut lines into the base. I have checked out images of relevant aircraft to get the size of each panel, only a rough guess of course. Pnce the lines are cut, I paint in with black artists acrylic. You could use oils as well. Its time consuming but the effects are nice.

Here is a couple of examples, again they are 72nd.

This is my only 32nd one so far. Its on sand, but i plan on doing the tarmac ones similar, and i am guessing this is what you have in mind. As mentioned, i have yet to work out what i will do with the edges, maybe black paint.

 

Bish, if I remember correctly from my USAF Rapid Runway Repair (RRR) days at Ramstein AB, Germany from -87 to -92, postwar German concrete is poured 10 meters on a joint.  I believe US pours use 10 feet on a joint.  I will have to look on Youtube for any 80's Local Salty Demo videos of the RRR repairs of the Spangdahlem runways and taxiways to be sure.

Nope, don't mind at all. While most of my concrete ones are all concrete, the ones with the grass do look much nicer.

In 72nd scale I do the German panels at 8 by 14cm. So if I have worked that out right, in 32nd that's 18 by 31.5. But again, that was a rough guess by looking at aircraft on tarmac and comparing the edge of the panels with parts of the aircraft. But each nation and period will be different. But that should work for your 88.

Great stuff. I checked out your other dios on photobucket too for other ideas. I especially like the one you did below (hope you don't mind me sharing it here with others). That is what I meant by edge as I was thinking of a sceneario where the edge of the tarmac/concrete hits a section of natural terrain with soil/grass.  I am curious how large the tarmac concrete section (German tarmac for that matter) should be in 1/32 scale.  But yea love your work.

panzer, not sure about the edges, as I have only done this in 72nd and I put an edge around the board. But in 32nd I plan on doing it different. For the expansion joints I cut lines into the base. I have checked out images of relevant aircraft to get the size of each panel, only a rough guess of course. Pnce the lines are cut, I paint in with black artists acrylic. You could use oils as well. Its time consuming but the effects are nice.

Here is a couple of examples, again they are 72nd.

This is my only 32nd one so far. Its on sand, but i plan on doing the tarmac ones similar, and i am guessing this is what you have in mind. As mentioned, i have yet to work out what i will do with the edges, maybe black paint.

Great idea with sandpaper. Do you guys know of some images or WIP on forums of someone that has already done this? I am curious how they did the edges and if they added any paint besides the weathering effects.  Also, I would think you would need to recreate the expansion gaps somehow that they usually add between the sections of concrete. But yeah that has me thinking...

Hello!

Fine sanding paper makes a great tarmac if it's the right colour - I mean anything from black to grey could work here. Add some spills, tar painted with gloss black paint and some vegetation - static grass, moss and you should be good to go. A bucket, a jerry can or maybe a bicycle could add interest - and those can be had in 1/35 - I'd say close enough. I hope it helps - good luck with your project and have a nice day

Paweł