Runway question

Modeling Subjects Dioramas
1

I’m building a number of small dio bases to put some 1/72 aircraft on.

The bases will simply be sections of concrete runway or hardstand.

The question is, seeing as these are usually composed of slabs of poured concrete, what is the average size for these slabs?

I’ve tried looking a pictures of aircraft on concrete, but usually the angle is too low to give an impresion of size for the slabs.

Karl

2

I don’t know if there’s a standard size. There would have to be variations depending on location, time period, materials available, etc…

3

Having landed on one or two I can definitely say made from concrete! they usually came in 5-10 metre square sections whatever that is in old money, WW2 runways were qiuck build and the easiest way was with concrete as the raw material, for some strange reason many of the uk hardstands were tarmac.
At a lot of established airfields ie pre war tarmac throughout was used. or I believe London airport now Heathrow was a grass field!

4

location is very important, i know for sure that Russian uses smaller slabs than the US. Again not sure of the sizes. Maybe you could sneak into a airforce base at night with a measureing tape.[;)] i reamember taking to someone on this forum who worked in france i think that repaired pumas?(the helicoptors) i will see if i can find him and send a pm[;)]

5

Thanks for the input guys & gals.

I was looking through the Luftarchiv website yesterday when I came across a photo of a Fw 200 on a concrete hardstand with a decent view of the slabs.

German jets were banned from operating from tarmac runways due to their tendency to set them alight! Hence concrete dio base!

Thanks

Karl

6

Back in my FOD walking days, I recall the hardstands being about 10’ squares at a couple of bases. I only walked a couple of runways and don’t recall any patterns there. I seem to think that they were poured in long/wide sections.

Don [alien]

7

The only FOD walks I had to do were short ones…but picking brass out of the flight deck tie downs was always a pain in the [censored] and I wasn’t on the “big deck”