One idea I will consider is whether landing struts could be lowered from the large fins on the side of the craft. Those are not really thin wings so it might be possible. If the struts can extend as well as lower then it might solve the balance issue.
It looks like my idea of having the aft landing struts extend down from the big side fins could be made to work. I can’t work on this any further this evening because my mouse batteries just conked out and I don’t have another pair so I’ll leave them to charge overnight.
TOS filming miniatures.
TOS actually had some nicely detailed miniatures for their use. The best of them was, of course, the 11 footer
Enterprise even if one side was unfinished. But other good miniatures were the
Galileo, the Klingon battle cruiser, the Romulan BoP and the
Botany Bay. None of those was quite as detailed or lighted as the
Enterprise, but they were quite good for their purpose and could work even when seen reasonably close. The
Galileo fullsize exterior was even more detailed than the filming miniature and I have always taken that as the “real” representation of the shuttlecraft.
Sadly other TOS miniatures were not as detailed, but managed to work for the long shots they were used for such as the Tholian webspinners and Kara’s ship from “Spock’s Brain.” It would have been nice of other miniatures had gotten the same attention as thhe
Enterprise, Galileo and Klingon ship, but that would have required more time and money than could be spared. Those other less important miniatures were really little better than many of the TAS designs in similarly lacking detail yet being more consistent in terms of shape in varying views. Indeed a few TAS designs were actually more detailed than some on TOS which was a welcome surprise.
In trying to create TOS versions of TAS designs I hope to flesh them out with sufficient detail to be on par with TOS’ better miniatures as if they would be used for filming reasonably closeup shots.
