Detail of clamshells up and down in 'park'
The clamshells do a lot for this kit. The standard Hangar 9 wheel holes look grim when the wheels are up but worse when down. They also give quite a bit of turbulence on landing - just when you need stability. The clam shells give a smooth laminar flow over the wheel bays and look fab in the air as they sequence up and down either side of the wheel action. On take off you have to pass back overhead for all your mates to get the full action. The sequence is quite slow -very scale and the U/C has a sliding servo mount that will allow one wheel up before the other.
On the full size, the hydraulically operated clamshells drop when the engine stops and you can get this 'static' pose by switching the servo power off half-stroke.
The flaps may seem excessive particularly if you know how much of a floater the H9 kit is. However, with the extra 2 servos and battery the flaps do a great job of settling her down with the nose level. The sight of her rolling down the runway with flaps fully down is very impressive, as the tail slowly drops to the deck she behaves like a much larger scale model.
The exhaust stacks look particularly good here in clean steel. They are now nicely black and crusty!

