Spaceship Construction Techniques?

[xenologer]

Just been running into a 'builder's block' :-D on my current spacefighter project.

And was wondering if anyone knows of some nice places that might show off a few of the 'tried and true' construction methods for various spacecraft parts.

For example I know classic-space has a small article on thruster design.

How about Retractable landing gear? I'm sure thats a topic thats usefull to all, and near as I know isnt well explored.

At the moment though, the main thing thats bothering me is the body and wings, more or less the middle of the ship.

I know the cockpit will go on one end, and the engines on the other. But so far my sketches are pretty fuzzy as to how the middle goes, just a blocky area... but im sure theres plenty of room here for possibilities... i just cant think of any. (a solid mass of 'dead bricks' doesnt seem the best use of space)

As for wings... i see two main ways to go, lots of stacked angle plates (see Fast Flyers set) or lots of slope bricks sideways. Neither one seems that great tho, leading to flat wings that seem tacked onto the aforementiond blocky body... what makes wings interesting?

[Kikuichimonji]

Whenever I make a rectactable landing gear, I usually use battle droid bodies and arms. Works pretty well but they don't come in that much colors, unfortunately.

I don't really know an index of building techniques, so I'd like to know if there is one as well :-)

[ghoulrealm]

I did some searching for examples of retractable landing gear and didn't find very much. There are these two examples of official sets

the jedi starfighter uses hinge pieces for landing gear

I really like the compact design of this one, but it would have been cool if it was activated from a lever switch as in the technic space shuttle

This is a great design but it is way to large for a system scale fighter.

Most of the mocs I can recall have something similar to these two designs, but I have created something that is a cross between the two. It was inspired by your recomendation of retractable landing gear in the space fighter contest thread ;-)

I am still planing on entering if I can get some images up. I've also adapted the design to work with city themed moc.

Addition:

This is the inner workings of my landing gear gearing system

after 1 rotation

2 rotations

both of the landing struts are geared just as you can see with the white gears.

the other gears are simply to line up with the black spiral gear. The spiral gear is the key to lock everything in place, otherwise it will not stand or remain retracted.

[xenologer]

Well

I still haven't quit figured out what to do about my spacefighter's main body.

But, in my quest for inspiration, I did find this cool webpage that you all might want to see.

http://members.ync.net/jam/cutaways.html

It has cutaway views, showing off the internals of some realworld Aircraft.

Cool stuff for considering overall layout and logical greeblie placement.