DANG 2017 - Aircraft

With DANG 2017 just a few days away, I wanted to get up some photos of the aircraft that I'll be using for the game. The timeframe for the game is the 1980s/90s and, as with the ships, I wanted to use Western powers aircraft. I decided to look through the 1/600 scale aircraft from Tumbling Dice and Picoarmor (really Oddzial Ozmy) for my choices. Since it is a little harder to get Tumbling Dice aircraft, I went with the moderns from Picoarmor. In addition to helicopters for the ships, I wanted each side to have a group of strike aircraft and multi-role aircraft and settled on getting some French and American planes.

For the side with the American planes, I selected A-4 Skyhawks, an old favorite, and F-16As.

F-16 multi-role fighters

A-4 attack planes

For the side with French planes, I chose the SEPECAT Jaguar (a plane that doesn't get into many battles) and the Mirage F.1 (which seemed to be exported everywhere in the 80s - 90s).

Mirage F.1 multi-role fighters

Jaguar strike planes

On the helicopter side, as with the aircraft, I wanted widely used and exported versions. So I went with the Lynx (although the Picoarmor version is the land-based Army version and not the navalized version) for the majority of shipboard helicopters.

Lynx side-view

And overhead view showing the rotors

The helicopters from Picoarmor included a set of thin plastic rotors to cut out and place on the helicopters. The plastic is sticky backed, which I found a little hard to work with since I kept leaving fingerprints on the sticky part. But it does provide a nice effect. I used a red and blue tail flash as national identifiers for the game (borrowing from the old Avalon Hill Tactics II game where the opposing nations are Great Red and Big Blue).

I also wanted some heavier helicopters for use on the cruiser. I originally wanted to get some Sea Kings helicopters, but they were out of stock. Instead I went with the land-based version of the UH-60. My thought was that the Army would buy the helicopters and let the Navy use them as troop transports on the cruisers. So, in the game, these helicopters can't be used for anti-submarine work and only have a limited attack capability.

UH-60s with their printed rotors

Overall, I think the aircraft turned out okay. Sometimes I have a tough time getting the details on the small aircraft to come out exactly as I would like. But they will work for gaming, especially for gaming where they are any real national markings.

I'm not sure what metal Oddzial Ozmy uses for there figures, but I found it a little hard to work with when cleaning some of the flashing and drilling holes for the flight rods. But the quality of the casting is generally good and they have a pretty good variety of WWII and modern aircraft.

My next post will have the after-action report from DANG. It should be an interesting game.