For this segment, I am going to explain my plan for displaying the model in flight. For quite a long time, I've felt that I want to display inflight models as much as practical as I feel they were meant to fly. This led to several variations of "aircraft on a stick". I've come up with some ideas on how to make this work and seen numerous examples of other builder's work using the pole approach where this was done in an excellent manner.
My desire led me to look for other unique ways to do this, however, it seems that the most popular trend is to display models on their wheels with open cockpits. This is a perfectly valid approach to displaying models and I have many of these as well.
Anyway I stumbled across an artist who built aircraft in flight as part of his business. His work had a look to it that really got the idea across that the model could fly. Looking at his photos, I tried to discern how he did this and eventually I came up with the approach I am going to explain in a moment. There's a bit more to this which I will mention a bit further in this post.
My viewing of his photos led me to believe that he was using an acrylic sheet behind the aircraft to support it. Thinking this through, I decided to give it a try. It works like this. The model is supported by the acrylic sheet by placing a portion of the model on one side of the sheet and the remainder on the other side.
There were some questions I had, which were answered by experimenting on a test mule (old Monogram P-38 kit)
The most obvious was the gap between the aircraft parts. This can be handled in a variety of ways, none which are perfect, but the effect overall is satisfactory. I determined that 1/8" thick acrylic would be sufficient for my model because it wasn't too big. This made the gap as small as practical. I also noticed that the gap appeared slightly darker than the surrounding model, so using a slightly lighter shade of the base color would help to offset this. And finally, if the model is put into a diorama where the viewing angle is best seen from the side, the gap can be hidden by the model. For twin engine aircraft, this is easier because the cowling can also block the view of the gap.
SO my plan was to use an acrylic sheet that went the complete width of the display base and extended from the base to the clear cover I had planned for the display. This way, when viewing the model from the front the acrylic sheet is nearly invisible and the aircraft looks like its flying.
Here's my initial plan I used when I designed the display. The line going through the wing represents the acrylic sheet.
In order to support the model, I figured I would need to install some brass tubing through the wings. It also required me to cut the wing into two parts ( a scary process). The brass tubes were anchored in the fuselage and the final photo shows a bit how this will work. I used a scriber to cut the wing. I also tried to count for the wing dihedral when making the cut so that the model would still display in a level fashion.
So as a final note. I eventually learned that the artist I had discovered was actually using a front faced mirror and was only mounting half of the aircraft on the mirror (cut through the fuselage). This was quite effective and I will be exploring that approach in the future. I was too far along on my build to change my approach, and I was concerned through the entire build that it wasn't going to work.
