Sand Shark AH-1F Cobra V2

I had no 3D modeling nor printing skills when I first built this helo 3 years ago. Hence 95% of the details were built by hand. Many details were left unbuilt because they were either impractical or impossible to be hand built. I have since learnt to 3D model and print with resin, it has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities and allow me to pursue these unfinished businesses. I chose to start with the skid connectors.

The original connectors supplied by Len Mount were resin-cast and non-scale. They were all broken from the hard autorotation mentioned earlier. Despite the hard landing, the fuselage miraculously survived and was 99% unscathed. I believe this is due to the connectors breaking, allowing the struts to rotate backwards and dissipating most of the crash energy. A rigid landing gear system would have torn up the fuselage and its internal bulkheads. Therefore I wanted to retain the breakaway property of the connectors as well as making them accurately scaled this time. A resin mixture that produces a hard but non-brittle property is required for this print.