Cheapo Modular Flight Stands for 1/600 Jets

... and spaceships too.

Have you ever wanted to make a really tall flight stand, but then realize your fighter jet or star cruiser is now too high to fit in the storage box?  No?  Well, it happened to me and I thought I'd share my solution for cheap modular flight stands, illustrated with a partially painted Yak-25.

For materials you'll need 1 inch washers, CA glue, two-part epoxy, Equate brand cotton swabs, and thick spaghetti.

I noticed a few years ago that the stems of Equate brand cotton swabs are not paper but in fact little hollow plastic tubes.  These little tubes, sans the cotton swabs on the ends, have become a staple of my scratchbuilding.  My wife buys the more eco-friendly brands, but I still have a stockpile of the old Equates.  Anyways, another thing I noticed was that a piece of thick spaghetti fits snug within the hollow tube, adding strength while remaining in place.  The plastic tube cuts very easily when hollow, but is very resilient with a pasta core.

Mix up a tiny bit of epoxy (cheap plumber's putty works fine) and use it to fill the hole in the 1 inch washer, forming the base.  Before the epoxy sets push a small section of cotton swab tubing into it to act as the lower part of the flight stand rod.  Attach another short piece of tubing to your miniature to act as the top part of the flight rod.  Get another, full length piece of plastic tubing and use CA glue to secure small pieces of thick spaghetti into one end of this piece and the tubing connected to the miniature.  You now have a male/female interface between the plane and the flight stand base, or between the plane, a flight rod extension, and the base.  The pictures below will probably explain all this better than I can.

Yak-25, flight rod extension, flight stand base

Flying low/ready for storage

Towering over the board at 65mm