I also provided illustrations to go with my mirror-display story in the December 2010 FSM. They include some other attachment ideas as well as tips for modifiying kit parts.
There are so many application possibilities using first-surface mirrors, including in-flight or ground dioramas. For example, you can create the illusion of several aircraft sitting side-by-side in a hangar or on an assembly line by having mirrors on opposing walls of a display box, with a half fuselage on each mirror and a row of tool boxes between them, as well as shelves, doors, windows along the back wall. Add a steel-framed roof with lights, and an open hangar door. Now, look into the hangar and see aircraft in both directions.
Or try the same idea with aircraft stored in rows in the American Southwest desert, like the AMARC at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base: Build desert groundwork on the base, then surround it with four mirrors tightly joined at the corners. Now mount fuselage halves on opposite walls. Looking down into the box, it would look as though there were hundreds of aircraft baking in the desert sun.
Here are a few other ideas I came up with:
- two or three HALO parachute jumpers just off the ramp of a C-130
- a C-130, C-141, or C-17 doing a LAPES (low altitude parachute extraction system) with the vehicle and parachute just clearing the ramp
- an in-flight Grumman Avenger with its torpedo halfway between him and the
- water
- a burning fighter with the pilot and canopy just above the fuselage
- after ejetcion
- an air racer about to go between the pylons
- an F-14 about to snag a cable on an aircraft carrier
- the space shuttle in orbit
- a diorama hillside leading down to a river that butts against the mirror with a half bridge against the mirror also; people standing on the bridge looking at a barnstormer passing inverted under the bridge
- Captain Sully’s A320 about to splash down in the Hudson
- Even non-aviation subjects, like an Unlimited Supercross biker in mid-jump or a submerged submarine
The only limitation is your imagination. These displays are guaranteed to stop judges in their tracks at the model shows.
