CANVAS EAGLES???

[Michi]

After 5 tries I finally got a decent print of an Albatros DIII, still have some cleaning out of the cobwebs to do but it's useable.

Mine was resin printed in 1/144th scale by a friend and turned out nicely. I simply love that plane!

[Dubar]

Nice!!!  If I was to do it over again I might have gone resin vice filament.

I'm also thinking about going the plastic disk rout for propellers vice 3D printing them.  I was printing them as part of the plane but the last few I printed them separately.

[Dubar]

Got a maneuver question...Using Maneuver 1S0, you have to roll 2D6 to test for spinning.  But using maneuver 27S2 you don't test for spin but you do use 2 fuel points.  In both moves the aircraft stays in the same hex.

Am I reading those right, why doesn't 27S2 have to test for spin?  Having flown planes when I was a young man, I know you can descend with barely any forward movement, never tried to reverse direction while doing it though.  Just trying to picture in my mind what move 27S2 would look like.

[Dubar]

Here's a 1/72 Camel I 3D printed not long ago, all painted up with some homemade decals I applied.  The struts are a little thick (scaled up from a 1/144 STL file) but that means less chance of breaking.  No where near the quality of an injection-molded piece, but it makes a good "game-piece" for my needs.  The decals were a pain, so I made them as simple as I could.  Actually once I got the sizes I wanted printing them out and fixing them to the aircraft wasn't so bad.  Even the lozenge decals came out good, way better than I thought, putting them on an 100% built plane wasn't as much fun. 

The stand is a made of a 3" (across the corners) acrylic hex, from a pack I bought off Amazon and drilled a hole in the center to hold some cutdown bamboo skewers I think I got from Walmart, tipped with an alligator clip.  The aircraft was drilled and tapped to accept a 3mm ball hex screw (RC car parts from Amazon).

On the acrylic base are bits I use in my homemade rule set.  The hex photo of the model with name is held in place by a 3D printed card holder I found on Thingiverse and resized it to meet my needs.  The card with the "6" on it indicates airspeed for that turn, also mounted on a smaller 3D printed card holder.  Both card holders, as of now, are held down by double-faced tape.  If I like the way it works I may super glue them in place.

Photo 3 is of the aircraft data sheet I made specifically for my homemade rules.

I'm going to see if these taped-on holders can be used for Canvas Eagles as well.

So far I have 16 3D printed 1/72 aircraft, 8 Entente and 8 German.

[Dubar]

LOL...I played a 1 on 1 game last night between the Camel and a Fokker DVII and recalled the reason why I made that small hex marker in the first place.  It's meant to be used as a marker to show where the aircraft started the turn, left in the hex until the move is finalized.  With multiple aircraft on the table I find it hard to remember where they started their moves from as I plot my moves.

I ended up removing the large holder and relocating the small holder to that spot.  The small hex marker will be positioned on the table behind the aircraft.  My initial goal was to be able to attach the speed marker to the base so it wouldn't slide off, but could be changed if the speed changed.

I also printed a turn counter I found on Thingiverse so I could keep a record of how many turns a game takes.  This game lasted 13 turns with the Camel taking a number of hits and leaving before any damage was done to the DVII.  Seems like no matter what rules are used it always comes down to the roll of the dice.

[bluewillow]

Nice, must print some myself

Cheers
Matt

[Dubar]

Here's a link to a place card holder that I liked even better but the groove is wider than the cards I printed and they fall out easy.  It reminds me of a concrete barricade you would see on the highway.  In your slicer program simply adjust the dimensions to the size you want.  My printer came with the Cura 4.80 slicer:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2539320

[SteveBurt]

How are you handling altitude in your rules? It’s kind of vital in air combat

[Dubar]

I'm not in my homemade rules.  I play solo and have found that I rarely changed altitude once the shooting started, even when playing Canvas Eagles I was that way, but it's necessary in CV when a hit causes you to lose altitude.  I also don't use fuel usage, I don't think CV allows enough fuel points to complete a decent scenario.  A few times I played I was running out of gas before shooting ever took place, trying to get into a good position to open fire.

My homemade rules were made to be simple, anyone wanting a copy just shoot me an email, they're 5 pages long including 1 page of aircraft statistics and 1 page on observation/bombing rules.  There's also a few pages aircraft data sheets, aircraft markers, and maneuvers that I made for the aircraft I have.

The rules are done in Libre Office, a MS Office lookalike.  They can be opened in MS Office.  I know I have gone back and forth between Word and Libre Office's Writer Document quite a bit.

I may eventually add altitude rules but not today!   

[Dubar]

The card holders I printed kept popping off the stands, wasn't the card holders fault as much as it was the double-sided tape I used to keep them in place.

As luck would have it I ran across a drawer full of small clamps (not sure what the actual name of them is) and they work perfectly.

Here's a battle between a SE5a and a Pfalz DXII showing the clamps.

[Dubar]

I'm thinking we could use a 3D Printing sub-forum!!!

I haven't been completely satisfied with my PLA prints off my Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, so today I decided to do some testing.

I've printed half dozen 1/72 aircraft with the nose pointing straight up and they came out pretty good, only things that was sketchy was the bottom layer on just about all surfaces (rear of wing, struts, wheels).  They could be sanded but that was something I was hoping to avoid spending a lot of time doing.  I'd say about 90% satisfied with the results.

Today I printed a Fokker DVII at a 75 degree angle instead of 90 degrees, plus I reduced the layer height from .2mm to .1mm.  I also printed a Fokker DVI but at .2mm layer height (no photos of that yet).

The result was about 95% of perfect (for me).  There's still some sanding to do but not nearly as much, plus cleaning some cobwebs off the model.  The hardest part is getting the cocoon from around the model without busting a strut!!!  What a waste of material!

Here's some photos (hope they're not turned 90 degrees):

[Dubar]

Here's some better photos of the DVII and the DVI taken with a Nikon instead of my cellphone:

[Fitz]

They look pretty good. Get some paint on them, and at tabletop distances all the layer lines will disappear.

I print all my FDM vehicles and minis at 0.1mm. I'm being tempted at the moment by the Bambu Labs A1 Mini; the output from that little printer is absolutely superb, and much much faster than my old Ender 3.

[Dubar]

Thanks Fitz!  The .1mm layer takes longer but I do notice a smoother bottom layer finish.

I've printed 30 aircraft so far and painted/decaled all but 6, 4 of which have been painted but not decaled.  Like you said in another post...they make fantastic "Gaming Pieces".  They're all sturdy, but I take care when handling the Airco DH2!  They should have covered that gaping hole between fuselage and tail with some canvas (had it not been for the pusher motor in the rear!).

I wish I had done some homework beforehand, I would have tried to get the paint jobs closer to some actual aircraft.  I recently purchased Jasta Colors vol 1 and 2 by Bruno Schmäling and Jörn Leckscheid and am about half way thru vol 1.  Very interesting reading about the different Jastas and their pilots and planes.  If the mood hits I can always print another one out and give it a go.

[Fitz]

That's the great thing about 3d printing game pieces: you'll never run out