Impale it?

Presentation control

My hasty decision to pull the landing gear of my Flanker in led to a problem with the presentation, especially as lying on its belly the model would put an unfair amount of stress on the flimsy missiles. Some sort of a custom polystyrene construct was the first idea that came to me, with my so-called skills we'd end up with a fittingly brutal-looking solution. The problem with that approach was, in my mind, the missiles, which I didn't want to knock off when setting the plane on.

The second idea I got was to do some sort of a metal rod as a stand, such as I made for the N/AW A-10 or the Imperial Incom T-65 prototype. This was much simpler to implement but it would require a sturdy place on the plane for the attachment. And a way to keep the orientation set so that the model wouldn't just fall off as easily as the poor warthog.

The second option, to recycling

On my plane's underbelly there was maybe one small area where the stand attachment could have gone, but the front-middle missile was inconveniently blocking it. The stability of a plane freely floating on a much-bent thick wire left quite a bit to be desired. I also didn't want to make a massive "holding fork" that I did for the space fighter proto. This made me decide that this was as far as I was going to spend on thinking about this option.

Option one again

I had been spinning a workable form in my head for a bunch of evenings and finally came up with something that I felt was decent. After a few thorough pass-throughs I even found my polystyrene sheets, so I was pretty much ready to start.

Absolutely no amount of Adam Savage's Tested channel's One Day Builds were not going to turn me into an expert. That in mind I set my expectations exceptionally low for myself. This wasn't going to be ornamental. The first word I had used about this was brutal and I thought that it was a plausible prediction.

I - From scratch

Maybe ten years ago I had toyed with the idea of making a Haunebu Gerät and I had even bought some sheets in a couple of thicknesses for it. My original attempt was just as successful as the idea sounded like, all that was left was the remains of a couple of uglily mangled sheets of plastic, while the others were left untouched. I started prototyping with the end of one of the mistreated ones, my idea being that I wouldn't at least start by ruining fresh sheets of material.

To begin with I measured a length of plastic that'd be the part where the plane was going to lie on. After a few slashes of an x-acto knife I had a piece that looked like a weird, italics and serifed symbol 1 from a funny angle. For my stand I'd need two copies of this exact shape.

The copy was done by using the first piece as a stencil and just slicing the lines into another mostly ruined part. Of course they didn't stay perfectly put while I was working on them, nor was my knife usage near exemplary, so instead of a twin I got a sibling of sorts.

These support parts were to be attached together at such a distance where the plane could just be dropped on, engines ending hugging the structure between them. The maximum width was to be almost as wide as the space between the engines, to avoid any shaking around, but not so tight that the paints would get scraped off.

I measured the approximate width first and cut four support pieces to flesh out the pylon. My idea wasn't to make this a solid-walled piece because that would've looked too bulky. These four may not have been enough, but this (the next two photos) was as far as I got in my first session.

The long flat part would've benefited from, thematically, a couple of round-ended rectangles. Acknowledging my status as a total beginner I did not even dream of trying to do anything fancy and decorated. A very bare-bones construct was going to be just good enough for the 'Mumblings.

II - A baseplate and fine-tuning

When my construct's gluings had cured I had to try it out. As a whole it was leaning a bit too much right (from the pilot's viewpoint), which was ok considering the attitude of the plane, but not for the structural stability. I cut a square baseplate for my pylon and glued a small spacer between it and the pylon's bottom to straighten the setup a bit. The craftsmanship was still... ugly.

The plane's position was otherwise ok but I felt it was a bit too level with the horizon, I wanted it to be doing a banking turn. A quick fix was also an ugly one: I sliced off a chunk of the left rear corner of the pylon's top (well described, eh?). In the photo below the adjustment was still in progress.

To add some little details I drilled a pair of holes to the upper and lower ends of the pylon, and carved them a bit wider with the old x-acto knife. This way I could push a narrow polystyrene rod through each to add another kind of "support beam" to my construction.

I didn't take photos of puttying, sanding and filing all these horrors away. Next I had to start thinking if this should be flat black or maybe the sky blue had more merits.

Attitude test

In its new and improved stance the plane looked much, much better. I've always liked the shape of the Flanker and this model really benefited from this dynamic-ish display pose.