The flight stand is composed of a steel ball bearing sitting inside a good ring magnet. The magnet clamps the bearing tightly and is solid enough to support the weight of the ship, but it allows the ball to roatte in the ring, meaning the ship can be set at any roll or yaw attitude.
Pitch variation will be managed by adjusting the height of the front and back stand. This would be easier with a single magnet location on the ship, but the ship itself is quite heavy and the centre of gravity moves depending on the contents. Also the 'bulges' in the hull between the landing gear are available and 'just the right size to fit this.
For some reason the annotations on this picture have moved - sorry. I'm sure you can tell whats going on.
The mounting is a sandwich of 1.5mm ply and 0.5mm styrene - simply because those are the materials I am laser cutting for the structure of the hull. The top plate clamps the magnet in place and is held with 4 M2 bolts through the sandwich. This in turn will be affixed to the hull structure with glued slots. I think large smears of 2 part epoxy or gorilla glue would also be beneficial - these magnets are STRONG!
The flight stand itself needs some design work. The M3 bolt shown in the steel ball will be shorter and simply bolt the ball to the top of an acrylic lasercut stand. I'm hoping to make this adjustable maybe up to as much as 300mm high to be able to pose the ship above the table top.
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