I've wanted for a long time to make my X-Wing fighters able to have a more dynamic look. There's a company that makes special magnetic engineered flight stands to do this but they are ridiculously cost prohibitive. After searching the interwebs I found this blog: http://penandlead.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/x-wing-customizable-magnetic-pivoting-flight-stand/
This guy gives a really nice tutorial on how to make the fighters look like they're in a dog fight by using BB's and Neodymium magnets to modify the X-wing flight stands. Below are my results. I'm pretty happy with it.
The TIE Advanced and the Y-Wings I've found are the fighters whose weight is a little more off balance than the others. The regular TIE fighter is a little top heavy as well.
The magnets I bought are a little larger diameter than the ones on the blog, and I found that I needed to stick two of them together to get the magnetic pull I needed to keep the ships a little more stable.
I clipped off the pin and drilled out a little hole in the post to allow the BB something to sit on. I roughed up the contact surfaces of the BB and the magnets with a file to give a little more friction to the contact.
I actually bought ring magnets for this project as was suggested in one of the posts on the blog. This gave a lot more grip between the ship and the magnets and prevents slipping.
Regular old BB's, make sure they are steel so the magnets will stick.
