Retractable Arms
Great news gang,
Thanks to CJTK1701 and Theo I've worked up a method for retractable landing bays. Instead of folded flaps though I'm using strips of thick card, or layered card.
The attached image illustrates the method, based on what CJ and Theo illustrated earlier. It turned out to be one of those "couldn't see the forest for the trees" type things. Once I got on the right track it clicked right in.
The telescoping portion of the arms are roughly square. The diagram below shows a cross section of the arms.
As piece 1 is pushed in, the red "plate" at its inner end hits the red plate at the end of piece 2, and piece 2 starts moving in, until it hits the end of piece 3. When pulled out again, piece one moves until the red plate hits the blue stoppers inside piece 2, then it starts pulling piece 2 along with it, until the red plate of piece 2 hits the stoppers inside piece 3. Simple, and very effective. The same technique could be used with cylinders to simulate hydraulics, telescopes, telescoping legs, all kinds of good things.
Last night I built a test piece using blue stopper strips on the outer edges of pieces 1 and 2 (more like CJ's original sketch) instead of the red plate, and it worked like a dream. I came up with the idea of the plates later, since it increases the amount the overall tube shrinks or grows. It might not be as strong, but I'll test this technique as well and find out.
Happy dreams!
SJ