X-37b Finished

Another one to gather dust on the shelves.

The X-37b shown while landing after another long-duration top secret mission for the DOD.

This was actually a nice and short fun build for a change. It wasn't as meticulously detailed as, say, my Titan or Soyuz FG but it is a nice model anyway. It's basic-ness was just improved a little by opening the wheel wells and the textured skin.

More pictures after the break as usual.

 

The wheels are all out of paper. the gear struts are rolled metallic paper, the wheels were made from small punched out circles with a little silver piece of paper as a hub cap. The doors are held in place with some florist wire.

The main gear wheel struts and wheels were made the same. The florist wire sticking out just holds the plane in place on the base plate and has nothing to do with structural reinforcements. The hub caps are pin heads and the actuators are also parts of pins.

The tail wings were modified. they now fold at the leading edge, so I could curve the wing instead of having a flat tail wing. Inside I placed a little piece of mat paper as reinforcement. It also provided some extra glue surface.

The base plate holds a rendition of a concrete slab runway which I gave a bit of a motion blur to suggest some speed.