by Bill Geoghegan
Photographs by the author
Transporting card models of aircraft has always been a challenge to me. How do you pack them in a way as that will prevent damage to delicate pieces like antennae, landing gear, propellers, etc.; and how do you do this without taking up a tremendous amount of space with boxes full of styrofoam "popcorn" or other soft protective material? A possible solution came to me last fall, when I was considering how to package about 10 paper aircraft models for the International Paper Modelers Convention in Herndon, Virginia -- about a 350 mile drive from my home in Connecticut. It was stimulated by a similar method that I had seen at an IPMS event a couple of years earlier, which I thought might be adapted to card models.
The method, quite simply, is to mount the models on a one-inch thick styrofoam sheet, cut to fit the carrier you will use, and hold them in place with three or four bamboo skewers -- the same kind that you normally use for cooking on a grill or hibachi. It takes only a few skewers, placed at critical locations, to hold an aircraft model immobile, and without damaging pressure on fragile structures. If you need to shorten the skewers (as I did), a pair of side-cutter pliers or snips, or even a very sharp knife, will do the trick. You can find the styrofoam in most craft stores. For a carrier, I use a long, shallow plastic storage box with a removable lid, found on sale at a local office supply superstore. Cardboard cartons would do just as well.
In my 350 mile drive to Herndon, everything went well, with one minor exception. A previously damaged landing gear on my Bf-109 broke (it was held in place by little more than hope). A little superglue to tack it in place and some Aleene's tacky glue (registration gift -- very timely), and we were good to go.
I used this with aircraft models, but I have no reason to think it wouldn't work just as well with the smaller ship models.
The only hard part in all of this was figuring out what to do with the styrofoam "sawdust" and scraps that were left after I cut the styrofoam sheet to fit in the carrier.
Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures.
