Moderlers, I intend to lay out ordnance in front of my F/A-18 in front of the aircraft as you may see in many photos.
Any tips or general rules I should consider?
Also, I plan to mount the aircraft and ordnance to a piece of wood. How should the weapons be attached? What I mean to say is, are missles simply layed onto their fins? Would the fins be folded? Would there be on some kind of mount or holder? If so, how could I reproduce this in a simple manner?
Thanks.
Usually the weapons are laid out starting nearest the aircraft from largest to smallest and in line (or there abouts) with the pylon the weapon is loaded on. Another method is to lay them out in standard loadout packages. You can make cribbing for the weapons or not. Up to you. Just have fun check out these pics: http://www.zap16.com/images/f-18.h1.gif or http://community.webshots.com/s/image5/9/35/76/72293576dmVoqb_ph.jpg
I know the second pic is an F-15 but I sent it along to show the weapons layout.
You should try and find a few photos and see how things are laid out for your particular aircraft. A common way is to display the weapons relative to their normal positions on the aircraft, ie in front of the pylons they would be carried on.
As for stands for the weapons, it is normal to have them sitting on a stand rather than the ground. Apart from anything else, a lot of these weapons are HEAVY. If you put a 1000lb Paveway bomb on the ground, you actually have quite a hard time picking it back up again. Trust me, even a 500lb Mk 82 is hard enough, not to mention it’s tendancy to roll. They will almost always be on some form of cradle.
Missiles, even inert ones used for displays tend to be pretty expensive, and are not exactly disposable. Often display weapons have been especailly made inert, and a unit will often not have many of these weapons to spare. Therefore they are more often than not placed on stands as much as anything to protect them from damage. Again remember the weight issue, a missile resting on it’s fins puts a lot of stress on the locating points for those fins.
Don’t be fooled by the green paint and yellow stripes, you’ll find that there are not many airforces that use live HE weapons for displays at airshows! They will most often be innert weapons that are painted to represent the live weapons, often the weapons that are on display are clearly the innert ones with the light blue bands.
What are you going to use to represent the small bullets from the machine gun?
I won’t do anything with bullets. At least I hadn’t planned on it.
