February 12: The nose landing gear is going to be very problematic, as it takes up a lot of space on the ventral area of the cockpit box, which is typically a very tight build to begin with and the landing gear has to stow away within its sleek shape.
Technic beams are one stud wide when laid on their sides, and that’s three plates. The Technic half bush is one plate tall when laid on its side. 3+1+1 (one half bush with tire on each side) = 5 plates sideways = 2 studs horizontally. Therefore, tire-Technic beam-tire will fold up perfectly into a 2 stud wide space. That part works.
However, now I need to radically redesign the Sparrow’s cockpit box to allow for:
* the landing gear as close to the nose as possible (I may need to make the ventral surface very “snubnosed” to get the nose landing gear far forward)
* the pilot seat
* connections for instrumentation
* maintaining a sleek look where possible around the sides and under the cockpit box if possible
* smooth transition from canopy to cockpit box
This is one of the tough parts, balancing all four elements. The Paladin is unsuitable for this new cockpit box, and so I will have to use a different G-Fighter as a base, as each one has a different SNOT arrangement. However, even then, I’m confident that most of the play features of the existing Sparrow cockpit box can be retained. If anything, the ventral surface may need to be sacrificed to get this done on time.