The pods on the original Eagles are made from wood covered with 1/16th acrylic sheet. I continued this as I constructed My model for the sake of authenticity. The big difference is, as you can see, they are hollow. I made the things with the help of my dad. He has a rather well equipt garage with a radial arm saw as the newist addition. I sent some plans to him to have a go at the project and he did a fantastic job making all the compound angle cuts and rabbit cuts for the sides of the structures. The wooden posts that connect the pods to the cage are fassioned from hardwod. They had to be replaced once the cage was ready as I had made them too small and in the wrong position anyhoo. The pannels are then glued to the wood after finishing.

The landing gear is made of brass stock cut out on a band saw and soldered together. This took the best part of two days to complete and I still have work to do. I have the strut fixed to a pivot on a lever and the models' weight is translated to a spring across a fulcrum. The result is that the gear is pushed down when 'flying' and when the weight of the 328 tone ship is on the pads, the spring takes the load. This allows the model to float on an active suspension!. I'm not finished yet, the Springs have to be isolated and a fine adjustment needs to be added.

I have been trying to paint the model similarly to how the original looks but these tests have looked poor in person for a display model so I'm going to paint it in the spirit of the original, keeping to the style like in the pic above but less in your face contrast. No paint in these shots is final. I'll try to paint in the panels individually using shades of white, grey and lt blue. I'll use decals and 0.1 mm black marker to depict panels within panels. This works well and the model has more depth than ever. I'm planning to repaing the entire model once the bells are done.

I will post some pics as soon as I get somewhere with it.