Viper - Part 2 (landing gear)

Next step is assembling the landing gear. I will pose both birds on the ground, not in flight. They will sit nose-to-nose in my display cupboard.

Mark II
The landing gear needed a lot of persuasion to sit together, but that's where all the clamps come in handy.

The front leg was a bit of a trouble-maker though. The right side was badly warped. I could have clamped it and let the glue do it's work, but the warped part would pull the straight part out of line, and the entire leg would be askew. So I just glued the top together and - 12 hours later - used hot water (boiling hot!) to straighten it out. I submersed it 5-10 seconds, then applied force in the direction I wanted it. After 4-5 repetitions, the result is very good and I applied the glue.

Test-fitting the fuselage shows there's not much there in terms of "gear bay". The front looks okay, but the back appear to be 2 big holes into the empty fuselage. More test-fitting later will reveal if it'll be needed to fill this up or if it will be obscured enough by the landing gear.

Anyway, those "insides" will need to be painted if we want to avoid bare plastic remaining visible, preferably black.

Mark VII

No issues whatsoever with the landing gear and this model does have gear bays and nothing else of the interior visible.