Airfield Dry-Summer

The grass surface of a field airstrip in a dry summer

For most of both world wars an airfield was simply a meadow. Aircraft took off from a grass strip that dried to straw tones in July and August, and what mainly set it apart from the pastures around it were the worn ruts, the canvas hangars and the churned area in front of the apron.

This mat captures such a surface as a finished whole. The format is 245 x 245 mm and the fiber length is chosen for 1:48, 1:35 and 1:32 scales. In color it mixes dried yellow with several green strands, so that the area does not look uniform even without a single touch of a brush.

• Usable straight from the package, with no painting and no scatter.
• Cut with ordinary scissors, the edges can be sunk into modeling putty.
• It holds with PVA glue on wood, plaster and a cardboard base alike.
• It takes pigments, washes and oil sticks if you want to add dust.
• The format allows a square base to be covered in one piece with no joints.

Its use does not end with an airstrip. A strip of worn field track can be cut out of the mat: you expose two ruts down to the soil and leave the middle overgrown, and you get exactly that transition between a green edge and a crushed middle that you keep seeing in photographs from the Eastern Front.

Spring, autumn and desert versions of the same range exist in the same format, so the same scene can be built in four seasons without changing the way you work.