Iron Brigade
Command Sergeant Major
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2007
- Messages
- 2,135
The airfield is 12 feet long by 6 feet wide. There are no custom airfield mats. Gordon laid down grass mats (paper with powdered grass glued onto it made for model railroads), then used white tape to mark out a diagonal runway running from the rear right corner of the airfield towards the mid-right front. He set out the custom made K&C RAF Control Tower he had made for me diagonally, parallel to the runway. Originally, the classic K&C wood and papier mache Quonset Hut (produced in 1996) and the Heco tower with the windsock were set in the rear of the airfield facing straight towards the front. Then the K&C RAF vehicles (two wood Austin K2 Ambulances (1996), a Bedford QL Fuel Bowser (1996), a prototype RAF Austin Tilly utility vehicle (2006) and about 20 K&C wood RAF aircraft from 1989 through 1996, and 2007 were set out on the airfield, also on the diagonal, along with 2 Sets of "The First of the Few (1989), a set of "Churchill and the Few" (1990), 2 sets of RAF Mechanics (1993), 4 sets of RAF MP and Dispatch Rider (1993), several AVG Flying Tiger Pilots and U.S. Marine Pilots (1990) and a Captain Clark Gable (1990) were set out on the diorama. There was a place left empty in the left rear corner of the airfield for a custom K&C RAF Hanger which Gordon intended to build for me, but Gordon was chained to his work desk for Andy's pet projects for the various shows, and he never got around to it.
Since Gordon's original set up, I crammed about another 15 K&C and Heco WWI and WWII planes on the airfield, and added several Heco vehicles and a Heco Nissen hut, as well as the Heco V2 Rocket Base diorama and V1 Buzz Bomb (because I had no where else to put them).
I hope the rearranging I have done will make the airfield diorama a bit closer to the way Gordon had originally envisioned it.
Dear Louis:
You must certainly have a splendid diorama or display of WW2 USAAF planes, figures & air field. My largest display is at about 29 inches by 84 inches. If I figures correctly your display is over 4 times as big, good show!
Keep up the good work!
Gary / "Iron Brigade" 4/16/2010