To the grassy airfields, march!

A stroke of genius

I got a mad idea: let's build a base for this plane, too. Change is refreshing, they say, so I wanted to do something different from the previous two (which also had been not too alike). During the second world war grass airfields were in use, so that's what I was going to do!

Mozart, help me!

There was a box of Mozardkugeln that we had bought from TXL and the lid was just about the right size in my mind. I tried the Focke on the lid and it sat there nicely, with no room to spare.

I thought that it might be beneficial to roughen the smooth plastic surface a bit to get the paint and glue stick better. So I took out a bit of fine sandpaper and did some crisscross sanding both on the top and the sides. All the sides I painted with Vallejo's Chocolate Brown (VMC 70872 Chocolate Brown) and left them there.

Glue and railroad decorations

After the paint had dried I dropped a good dollop of white glue on the lid and spread it around to cover most of the surface while avoiding getting the layer too thick. I gave the edges a bit of a clear buffer space just in case.

I started applying the greenery where the model itself would block the base and I tried to leave a bit of clear space where the wheels were going to end up. Then I pressed the plane on its place and kept dumping stuff on the remaining base. Mostly I used some green fluff  (Woodland Scenics: Coarse Turf, Medium Green), but I also tore up a few larger bits of the yellower green (Woodland Scenics: Foliage, Light Green) carpet-like stuff. In a few random places I dropped tussocks[?] (Noch: Grasbüschel Sommer; Noch: Grasbüschel Herbst) just to provide some variety.

When I was just about content with the result and coverage, I detached the plane and pressed its wheels in a straight line backwards from its standing place. My goal was to get slight but hopefully noticeable ruts. This way the plane shouldn't look like it had just fallen from the sky (see my nitpickings in April regarding the AT-ST in the wintery scene).

Yeah, I had applied the decorations quite heavy-handedly so that I wouldn't even accidentally end up with bald spots on my base. I left the setup to cure for about a day before I gently shook off the excess material.