A personal Page of Science Fiction and Orange
"Defending Her Honor!"
The new landing gear
The original model came with a large intake running most of the ventral length with landing gear much like conventional aircraft - wheels in other words. In my humble opinion, spaceships should have landing pads. On the bottom of the model there are two symmetrical bowed rectangular panels. I carved these out with a dremel (see second pic) to install my own landing gear. I made the new landing gear master from sheet and strip styrene and pieces from some medical supplies I was recently forced to have. This pic shows the masters. The top piece is the landing pad and the bottom piece is the bay minus some cables and air tanks (1/500 life raft canisters from a Nimitz) and wire mesh to cover the holes.
These two pics show the bay and skid respectively, of an assembled resin copy of the master to be installed on the port bay. The life raft canisters have been installed and hoses ran and a light coat of Tamiya primer sprayed on. The primary struts are brass rod and the hydraulic looking pieces are aluminum tube. The gear was recently reduced in height an 1/8th of an inch since these pics. The main strut just looked too long to be fully retracted into the fuselage. It's still too long but it's Sci Fi so, hey it does something amazingly futuristically technical. I'm working on it.
This pic shows the bays installed. This was after a failed attempt at installing the port bay. Measure twice, do once. I did. I just forgot a whole dimension and the bay was drastically crooked. Lots more resin dust lining the lungs getting that re-carved. Now I am at the arduous task of filling and sanding smooth the hull where I nicked and cut and scraped and scuffed and hacked and bashed and gouged getting the bays in place.
