Happy with his ProStand purchase, Bob McDaniel of St. Leonard, MD paid us quite a compliment by saying he'd put aside both home-brew plywood and flimsy foam commercial fuselage stands in favor of ours. His point being he felt we'd created the perfect fuselage stand. Coming from such a highly experienced modeler - that was music to our ears!
As background; both old fashioned plywood and commercial foam stands suffer a few problems. A big one being reliance on sticky-back foam weatherstrip at the saddle that fails over time because the foam deteriorates and/or the adhesive gives up. We knew there had to be a better way. We began by breaking the problem down into sections.
First, drawing on our strength and experience with molding the complex side frames of the Pantera helicopter (where our innovative design allows the pieces to snap together and self-align), we turned to injection molding for the major components.
- These intricately molded helicopter side frames just snap together We also thought it would be nice if the uprights would accept both fuselages and wings - thus making it more versatile than an ordinary fuselage stand. Another strength of injection molding is the color is through-and-through so you won't have to paint, or otherwise finish the surface. This means you put it to use immediately with no waiting.
Then second, we eliminated the sticky-back weatherstrip by designing a custom snap-lock molded silicone saddle. Soft and supple like silicone fuel line, silicone as a saddle material has an added bonus - it's grippy, which helps holds your fuselage in place! And since it conforms to t-shape edge of the upright, it snaps over the edge and mechanically locks in place instead of relying on something never designed for modeling use in the first place!
Anyway, Bob kindly shared a few photos of how he makes use of his ProStand featuring his 84" wingspan Bandito Grande and we're sharing.
- Securely cradled - perhaps ready for setting wing to stab alignment
- While on charge, it's protectively raised off the workbench surface, and in position to comfortably work within the model
