In flight Diroama (Me 109 vs P-47)

Just about done with Academy’s Me 109, love the camofloge and is a reasonable good kit, but with no details in the landing gears and cockpit, I wanted to keep the model simple with no extra aftermarket parts.So I thought it would look nice in a in fight dio dogfight with a P-47N (Nicknamed Gerry) in January 1945.

Now I haven’t done a fight dio, original I thought the plane would be held up with fishing line, thought this is ineffective and not very good for a show piece. So I think that a support bean would be better, but I don’t know which would be better, a brass rod or a acrylic rod. Though the Brass rod is strong (so less chance of falling) but a acrylic rod is transparent, but I don’t know where to find one.

How should I do it?

I buy acrylic from TAP Plastics. You can find them online. I wouldn’t be afraid to make it pretty thick, either.

A more general question… it’s a challenging diorama if you have both aircraft. If you plan to have them in pursuit, the scale will get you. Even a couple hundred yards translates to around a dozen feet at scale.

Other more manageable options would be one flying over the other while the loser is bailing out, or a head on convergence (pass).

Boy, Bondoman’s right here… You’ll have a helluva time getting it to look right with both aircraft in the same scale… This type of diorama is best depicted in a shadow using mixed scales and forced perspective. Suspending the aircraft is especially tricky, you’ll see the rod/wire/string no matter what, so you’ll need to restrict the viewing angle using a shadow box window… That way you can hide the suspension system for the view and control the angle and lighting…

I’d suggest getting copies of the “opponents” in 1/72 scale (even better, 1/144) and doing both of them from opposite perspectives…

That way you can do bth 1/48th kits, and you don’t have to be locked down to the “earth” being at the bottom of the box and the “sky” above… You could have the “earth” at the rear of the box, on top, on either side, whatever…

You could pose them together as “adversaries”, instead of trying to depict a dogfight. I did a P-40 and Zero that way with brass rod.

003-10.jpg picture by fermisb