ALT 1977 1/400 [7]

As I maybe have told, earlier on in the building process, I had two ideas for displaying the SCA and Enterprise. One in flight, during the release of the orbiter and one at take off. I still didn't know which one I would want to make. As you can see, I now have. 

I asked my friend Zoltan about his opinion on the matter and he just gave me the last little encouraging push of what perhaps already was taking shape in my head all along. It indeed is a very interesting display, it shows the complexity of the wings of the 747, with all the flaps and slats opened. It has a fully deployed landing gear that makes the model more interesting to look at. Especially in 1/400.
The main advantage of this display option, however,  is the end result is much more stable. It doesn't "fly" high above the frame to which it is attached on a thin brass rod. And it lacks the complexity of two aircraft "hovering" loose above one and other. It would make for one very wobbly, unstable display. The main disadvantage is the big amount of extra work on a very tiny scale I have to do: the landing gear and the slats and flaps on the wings. Oh well, I think I can handle that now, after making the nose wheel.
more after the jump.

For now I have tried and made the nose gear from scratch. I rolled silver coloured paper for the gear itself and laminated black card a couple of times for the wheels. I used a hollow punch to cut them out. Using the original instructions as a guide, I made the other gear parts from scratch. I used two of the tiniest silicate balls I could find for the gear's landing lights. It looks quite nice, I think.

After installing it, all of the nose wheel got a small drip of thin CA glue poured over it for reinforcement. It shines a little more now and is rock solid. A bit tricky, for the thin CA is very quick drying and it flows everywhere when you aren't careful. I prefer the thicker variant. But in this case, it really did the trick.

The tail end of the plane also is getting near finishing. It also has a lot of parts, the tail elevator wing roots are a little simplified, I also didn't need the internal reinforcement in this scale. The vertical tail is made from glossy photo paper. The APU exhaust still needs to be made as well as the port tail elevator wing. As usual, the fit is very good

Another thing I did is accentuate the cockpit windows. The paper tends to fade the colours a bit and I wanted the windows to stand out a little more. So, now it's slowly coming to the midsection of the plane, the wing roots and the engines. Oh yeah, and sixteen more wheels, divided over four bogeys under the belly and root of the wing. And the struts for carrying the enterprise. And the Enterprise. With the tail cone. And a display frame. In other words: lots more to come!
Thanks for taking a look!
--PK