Originally Posted by
YearoftheTiger
I think I'll try modeling the nose cone w/cutouts and the visor operations when I get some time next week. It's very simple, and a good place to begin animating the mechanics of lowering/raising the nose cone/visor.
I'm not sure to what extent you intend to model the mechanism... but I wouldn't call it simple.
It's not Rube Goldberg, but it's still a pretty complex mechanism, with rails, hydraulic cylinders, uplocks (both hydraulic and manual), intermediate stops for the 5° and 12.5° positions, etc.
And you'll discover that (even on the production aircraft) the nose can still be lowered to 17.5° by removing a set of mechanical stops (IIRC the reason for that is already mentioned earlier in the thread).
Wishing you luck and courage with your venture, and I will be curious to see the final result!
CJ