Aces High A Blood Red Skies Plog by CommodoreRob

I have dug out my aircraft for the midway game. I had not realised I had so many options. I could have accidentally bought more than I need, but you can never have too many miniatures … Right?!

Although there is a free file for the Yorktown available on line in 1/200 scale , it is designed as a RC model. Whilst in theory perfect, when looking at the file, it needed adjusting to be the correct scale as it was not the correct dimensions for 1/200, and it was in sections and not waterlinrd, so there was too much potential for error.

I then found a cheap stl file that I could scale up which seems to be perfect.

So I acquired a 3d FDM printed in November and it occurred to me that maybe I could 3D print the carrier islands for the two carriers I needed for this project. So I went looking band found that the whole carrier was available as an STL file… So as you do you start to think big.

The files just needed a little scaling, and so with a click of a couple of button I had a 1/200 file. Bobs your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt…

Not so fast the carrier is just over a meter long in 1/200 scale.  So not going to fit on my 25cm print bed. So it needed splitting up. That’s where my lack of expertise in 3d printing has shown itself.

The first cut I made was to waterline the model. At this point the slicer decided to start removing parts of the model. But I have been making models for a good few years now so I thought ok we can deal with this a bit of filling and away we go.

Well it has been a while since I have updated this project. In fact it has been a while since I have done any BRS stuff. In September I have am planning a club game based around the battle of Midway (which I will detail more in a different post). For this game I need two carriers models one for the USS Yorktown and the other for the IJNS Hiryu.

IT’S A MATTER OF SCALE

The first challenge was going to be what size do i do the carriers in, BRS being a 1/200 scale game that was my first choice. So i went searching for 1/200 scale models for both these ships, unfortunate I could only find Yorktown at a walletr frightening price, so my next option was to drop down a scale to find 1/350 scale models. This I did do, again they are not cheap , but do able.

HIATUS AND INSPIRATION

This idea then got put on hold whilst I renovated my house. As part of that renovation I had oak laminate flooring put in and was left with some extra pieces left over. This gave me an idea… Would these boards be big enough for making some 2.5D carriers? After some calculations i realised yes they were, and better still they were wide enough for doing 1/200 scale ships …result.

PLAN

There are a couple of ways that I could approach this.

1. I could draw the carriers directly onto the boards
2. Or I could create templates using graph paper, which I could then transfer to the boards.

I decided that of these two the second option would give me a better and more accurate look to the models.

DRAFTING

The next stage was to draft up the Carriers, I found a couple of standard scale images on the web, which I proceeded to print out on A4 paper. Then comparing the dimensions of the real carriers to the images on the paper I determined the approximate scales for each drawing.

MEASURING

The next stage was to note some of the key measurements to the prints outs. Once I was happy with the number of measurements I had. There was some more maths involved in figuring out the 1/200 scale measurements.

Ok so it was May 2020 when this idea was first “floated” with the aim of getting it sorted for September 2020. It never happened as reality kind of got in the way. Now nearly 6 yeah later I am coming back to this project idea, albeit it with a couple of twists

1. I have a target to hit. It is the Naval Wargames Weekend in the Autumn at The Fleet Air Arm Museum  Yeovilton. When I plan on putting this game together.

2 Gone is the flooring idea, since I now have a 3D printer  and have stl files for both the carrier’s I need.

So although I still have the boards which  were started this method is going to look a bit better as it will be water lined 1/200 models of each carrier.

I am also going to create a separate entry for each of the carriers and also the aircraft.

So indeed it has been scratch “two” flattops.

delete

Next up is the Mustang’s, I will admit these are not my favourite planes of the Second World War

So I have decided to keep it simple.

One of the new Warlord hard plastic Mosquitos