GHQ Models Forums

Anyone use MSD Luftwaffe 1946 aircraft for those that GHQ does not make? Wanted to know if scaling was even close? I’m looking at some Hamilcar gliders but don’t want to spend the casheesh if they’d look obviously too small/lack of detail etc. not aware of any one else selling them other than shapeways…

BurtWolf wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:21 am

not aware of any one else selling them other than shapeways…

They might not meet your size / detail requirements but the UK-based Heroics & Ros and Scotia both do 1/300th Hamilcars. Although saying that, I've migrated to 1/600th scale for gliders (and other aircraft likely to land on the table) given the disparity of ground scale (most sets of rules I've used in the past had a 1/2000th ground scale) to model scale. It allows you to have more than one or two in a typical landing zone on the table.

I forgot that there's a few 1/600th hamilcars lurking in this drawer. They're the ones with invasion stripes (IIRC).

Oh yeah - I see them now that you’ve pointed them out. Do you do 1/600 with Horsa and Waco gliders too?

BurtWolf wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 22, 2021 6:30 am

Do you do 1/600 with Horsa and Waco gliders too?

Yes to the Horsa, no to the Waco - no one did one when I bought the others. The Polish(?) firm Oddzial Osmy have since added one to their range. You can get them at picoarmor.com. A word of warning though, the alloy they use is very hard (probably to get the detail at that scale) and I find it hard on scalpel blades and difficult to (hand) drill.

You may of seen the C-47s in the microarmour storage thread.


Here's a few of the others.


The Ju 52s and DFS 230s are by Oddzial Osmy. The C-47s, Horsa, and Hamilcars are from the Heroics & Ros 1/600 the Coastal Range.

A size comparison. The larger Ju 52 is a Revell minikit that didn't give a scale but it's about 1/300th. It's also the pre-war civil airliner version, but hey it was cheap!

Great looking aircraft Gazza! I switched to 1/600 aircraft as well. I like to put whole squadrons on the board when I'm doing some kind of air activity, and doing tat in 1/285 scale is too expensive. The quality isn't the same, but close enough for me!

Another option, which I may have mentioned in another thread are the 1/350th and 1/700th scale aircraft sets Trumpeter (and other manufacturers) do for their aircraft carriers. Given the subject matter the vast majority are obviously naval types but you can get B-25 Mitchells (for the USS Hornet) as well as Stukas, Bf 109s etc for the Graf Zepplin

It's a bad example as GHQ do make it but it was the only one I had handy, but this is one of the 1/350th Mitchells (obviously). They do come with props, but I intend to leave them off.

I use Trumpeter 1/350th for my Micronauts.

Very nice!

At the risk of taking this thread even further off topic, I had a bit of trouble with the 1/700th aircraft as they were often too thin to drill out for our standard aircraft stands. I eventually solved it by drilling out a much thinner hole for a length of thin copper wire which I wound around the wire of the standard aircraft stand and then cut to length. So each of the 700th scale aircraft look like they have a small spring glued to their undersides.

I’m torn on the scaling issue, I spend a lot of time trying to add detail to my terrain because it’s what pleases me when I do gaming. I can see the advantages in the work you guys have done (shows that the planes can be painted very nicely), as well as the cost but I just have to get over the scale differential. Gazza thanks for posting those pics and information, it’s very helpful.

MSD Luftwaffe 1946 and HR 1/300s are close enough to GHQ in my experience.

Burtwolf wrote:I’m torn on the scaling issue

No problem, whatever works for you.

I find that the smaller scales look/seem a little larger to me as the aircraft are normally closer to my eyes than the ground vehicles given that they are 4-8 inches above the table's surface.

Some of the more notable aircraft in my collection that GHQ does not offer ...


French Breguet Br.693 twin-engine ground attack planes. Reasonably widely used in the 1940 campaign.


Romanian SM.79jr bombers (Romanian license-built twin-engine versions of the Italian SM.79 tri-motor bomber). These can provide occasional heavy support for my Romanians during their 1941/42 campaigning against the Soviets.


Italian Macchi C.200 Saetta fighters. I believe this was the most common Italian fighter on the Eastern front.


Soviet Pe-8. Strategic bomber that appeared in the skies over Berlin long before B-17s or Lancasters, but at such a low op tempo that the Germans may not have even noticed. The Soviets soon de-prioritized anything that didn't affect the front line battlefield, and the remaining Pe-8s served mostly as high-priority transports. But still, I mean, how could I resist?


Shown again, this time with some Yak-1s for a size comparison -- the Yak-1 being another aircraft not produced by GHQ. Got to have something in my Red Air Force early-war fighter repertory that isn't an I-16, ya know?

-Mark

Great aircraft pictures. They are great, thank you for sharing.