airplane

[ghoulrealm]

I not much of a city theme fan, but my little brother really enjoys airplanes, and when I get a good idea I like to try many possibilities.

This is my attempt to adapt my landing gear to a system scaled airplane

unfortounately the gear housing has to be manualy manipulated directly

the tail cone is the knob that extends and retracts the wheels

uh oh I retracted the wheels while landed! You can see the front wheel in the corner of the windshield and side window. That and the internal gearing extremely limits the leg room inside. With the gear down I can get maybe 2 mini figs cofortably inside. With it up I can get 1 if it is laying down on top of the front wheel.

On the plus side there is plenty of baggage space in the rear.

[xenologer]

Neat!

I'm not sure I'd be willing to sacrifice minifig space for the gear mechanism tho... I'd probably end up doing everything 'manual'.

[Chuck]

Pretty nice, but there are more space-efective ways of doing it ;-)

[ghoulrealm]

Pretty nice, but there are more space-efective ways of doing it ;-)

Now youv'e got me curious?

Are these alternatives going to retract all the gear by a seperate mechanism that is integrated into the model in an nonintrusive way. And for the front wheel to be inclosed within the body of the plane will severly limit space no mater how it's done on a plane of this size.(even if it's only the diameter of the tire)

I was going to use window shutters or plate hinges instead of inverse slopes which may have saved me 1 brick's worth of space in front. I didn't have any white ones nor was I especially concerned about perfecting it that much :-P

In any case I couldn't find anything with the same effect aside from the technic space shuttle and nothing like it at this or a smaller scale.

My little brother didn't want me to smash it, so I assume it's worth keeping around for him X-D

Here is the inner gear mechanism

[Hobbes]

That's really nice.

I wouldn't know about other space-effective ways because I wouldn't even have come up with this one. With a bigger plane this would work quite well, I think, because there'd be more room for minifigs. Space has always been a problem with old-style planes (pun intended ;-)).

[simonwillems]

When I sometimes make airplanes with "retractable" ladinggear I just take of the wheels: it saves on room on board and no complicated technical system is needed inside... :-D

No seriously, it's a great idea of trying this on such a small scaled aircraft and I actually like it!

:-)

[mutex]

A Little off topic but you should put your yellowed white pieces in bleach water. It really makes wonder.

I put all my white pieces in bleach water for about a week (change bleach every 2 days), they come out whiter than white :-) like new

This is no joke, it really works. *y*

That was the tips of the day from mutex ;-)

[Asuka]

Very cool and ingenious. *y*

[ghoulrealm]

I put all my white pieces in bleach water for about a week (change bleach every 2 days), they come out whiter than white :-) like new

Maybe stains and dirt is sentimental to me? It's like badge of honor for all the good times my pieces and I have been through :'-)

:-D X-D

I'll try it if I can remember to pick up some bleach sometime. ;-)

All my cloths are dark or black, even undergarments, so I don't usually get pure bleaches.

[Ruben Elshof]

Very nice. :-) ;-) *y*

[zeki]

Nice job! I like the way that LEGO created the 4943 F-14 Tomcat with retraction wheels and it works realy well. Maybe you could use some of the features from that one to make it look even greater.

[ghoulrealm]

Nice job! I like the way that LEGO created the 4943 F-14 Tomcat with retraction wheels and it works realy well. Maybe you could use some of the features from that one to make it look even greater.

I can't seem to find any official "4943 F-14 Tomcat" set or instructions?

[zeki]

It's a creator set. The officila name is Fast Flyers and F-14 is one of the models.

image

[ghoulrealm]

oh. ok, I know that one. X-D

So it has retractable landing gear! Are they individually manual or on a hinge or what? Because mine is "semiautomatic" (They all raise and lower at once)

what ever they are, they are on a small scale (wich i like) and looks worth looking into.. *y*

[MatthewUSA]

Your MOC is very ingenious. I definitly give you two *y* up for the landing gear concept. I wanted to mention that the landing gear on the 4953 set is manual. Each wheel has to be lowered by hand. Again very cool model. Model on.