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Hi,

It has been a while since I posted a MOC, but I have not been sitting idle. Here is my latest creation, a LEGO Technic replica of the infamous F14A Tomcat:

24616412728_0a54625f1a_c.jpg

It is as densily packed as I possibly could with features. It has seven electrified functions (driven by one M-motor), six pneumatic functions and four manual functions.

38456508972_f2d5421bec_c.jpg

Driven by one M-motor and using a manual gearbox the following functions are electrified:
- The engine turbines (directly coupled to the M-motor)
- The rotating Gatling gun on the port side
- A small pneumatic pump
- The canopy
- The landing gear
- The eight landing gear bay doors
- The main adjustable wings (in the picture above they are in the low speed, extended position)

38456508342_fd848764fe_c.jpg

Next to that there are six pneumatic valves controlling the following functions:
- Switch between the internal small vacuum pump and the external large vacuum pump
- The bleed doors in the air-intakes of the engines
- The delta wings at the side of the air-intakes
- The arresting hook
- The front and rear flaps on the main wings
- The two air brakes on the main wings and the three air brakes at the end of the fuselage

38456507502_b282201cfa_c.jpg

The plane also features a couple of manual functions:
- A knob to control the pitch of the aircraft. The rear horizontal wings and the joystick are controlled with this knob.
- A knob to control the roll & jaw of the aircraft. The rear horizontal wing, the vertical control surfaces and the joystick are controlled with this knob. If the landing gear is down, the front landing gear is steered with this knob as well. A special differential control mechanism is used to combine both pitch and roll control and feed only one signal to each wing.
- The nacelles that contain the turbo engines can be opened and the engines can be taken out.
- A double lever to activate the ejection seats. The canopy is ejected at the same time as well.

38432527146_eb844de902_c.jpg

This model is available as a limited edition exclusive set on my website.

Finally some fun facts:
The model weighs around 4 kilograms and is just shy of 4000 parts
It is 87 cm long, 101 / 66 cm wide (main wings open / swept back) and 33.5 cm high when put on its stand
It has ten small pneumatic cylinders and nine shock absorbers
It has 549 axles, 110 gears and 111 panels
Most of the functions are color coded so that you can distinguish them during the building process

Comments and questions are welcome as always.

Leg godt,

Jeroen Ottens

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Just when  I thought you weren't gonna finish this, you did! HoF. This is probably my favorite MOC ever. :wub::wub:

EDIT: Video please!

Edited by BrickbyBrickTechnic

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Definitely hall of fame! Your work continuously amazes me!

Btw, when will your AMG GT R be shown?

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What a masterpiece!  Amazing... So glad to see it finished. it's only missing..... A video :tongue:

Ps. HOF :wink:

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Masterpiece.   Unfortunately very few will ever be able to enjoy it as much as I'm sure you did in designing it.

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Awesome looking build. But seriously... 

 I have done the math for the full sale of 200 of your F14 planes. (In Canadian Money) 

3125€ is 4706$ Canadian for the first 180. The remaining 20 is 4000€ which is 6023$ can. So total you plan to make makes 967,540$ Canadian. That’s very close to 1 million dollars you’re planning to make from 1 design. I understand you have a great model..... but seriously. This is just highway robbery. Let’s say the parts cost half that.., so you walk away with half a million dollars Canadian!  You have lost my respect. Sorry that’s just sad...

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35 minutes ago, Lox Lego said:

Awesome looking build. But seriously... 

 I have done the math for the full sale of 200 of your F14 planes. (In Canadian Money) 

3125€ is 4706$ Canadian for the first 180. The remaining 20 is 4000€ which is 6023$ can. So total you plan to make makes 967,540$ Canadian. That’s very close to 1 million dollars you’re planning to make from 1 design. I understand you have a great model..... but seriously. This is just highway robbery. Let’s say the parts cost half that.., so you walk away with half a million dollars Canadian!  You have lost my respect. Sorry that’s just sad...

I am with you there, I had not read that part, that is just a ridiculous amount for such a model... Even though people will probably pay that.

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59 minutes ago, Lox Lego said:

Awesome looking build. But seriously... 

 I have done the math for the full sale of 200 of your F14 planes. (In Canadian Money) 

3125€ is 4706$ Canadian for the first 180. The remaining 20 is 4000€ which is 6023$ can. So total you plan to make makes 967,540$ Canadian. That’s very close to 1 million dollars you’re planning to make from 1 design. I understand you have a great model..... but seriously. This is just highway robbery. Let’s say the parts cost half that.., so you walk away with half a million dollars Canadian!  You have lost my respect. Sorry that’s just sad...

It looks to be a nice model, but he'll never sell that many models in a year. And the only way he'll get any real selling exposure for them is possibly listing them on Ebay. He might get a bite on a couple of them, but I am skeptical. I've seen people trying to sell Sheepo's Mustang model for a few thousand dollars and they couldn't even get that. That model had a huge $ amount of parts in it. Advertising a high price model with no video isn't going to help either. He does have a fortune already invested in each model, but good luck trying to get that back out of them along with a profit. Well known builders don't get that kind of money in charity auctions for their work.

Edited by Meatman

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I'd be willing to bet that the parts alone are about $1500 at average Bricklink prices based on my building of many such sized models over the years.  For even one of them, you are looking at probably 30 hours in labor to order and track all those parts.  Even if you value your time very little, that is several hundred dollars in labor.  Then to make a kit you also have to sort and pack all those parts which for 4000 parts is probably another 10 hours.  21% of the price (~$700) is VAT which has nothing to do with the model and goes straight to the government.  So the actual "profit" here is probably only a few hundred dollars per model, and that's not accounting for any of the time spent designing it and making the instructions.  As someone who has made a lot of instructions, I can say that there really isn't any money in it.  You never break even for the time spent.

Based on how many people will even buy instructions for a large model like this much less a kit, I'd guess it will take 5-10 years to sell them all.  I don't think any of my instructions have *ever* sold 200 copies, and that's for only a few dollars.

But getting back to the model, it is just incredible.  Really looking forward to the video to see how all those functions work.  I have built a couple of Jeroen's car models and they are top notch.  The F-14 is one of my favorite planes and this is a great rendition.  

I'd like to see a photo of it next to another model for scale because it is hard to understand how big it is.

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Hi

Blackbird... i have more then 20 MOC built and displeyed at my home (not to brag.. just saying i have some experience)... there is no way that the parts cost 1500 $ in bricklink with only one motor and by looking at this model... just no way.

i've recently built the Lucio switch crash tender and parts including motors were close to 1000$ in bricklink. you just need to be patient and do the calculations...

Moran.

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Fabulous! A real masterpiece! You are really one of my favourite builders.

You will see if this selling scheme works, but I doubt it very much. I would suggest selling the instructions at a premium price of say 100 EUR instead.

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Congratulations for the accomplishment of this huge and functional model :thumbup::thumbup:!

IMO the color scheme would look better in white & LBG. A video would be great to see and support the promotion for sure.

I received some leaks of the Tomcat last week and the first thing which came on my mind was “How on earth is he gonna sell all sets for this price?” Well – I have my doubts as others have said, but anyway – I really wish you good luck and a lot of success! I´m interested in all the process and experience related to the compiling of the complete sets, instructions, packaging and so on. Understandable if you wouldn´t like to share this here, but I´d really appreciate a PM from you, if you don´t mind.

By the way – I like your previous plane, the Sukhoi SU-37 very much too (and it features a sharper nose tip as well, sorry :tongue:).

 UBFDO.png

 

9 hours ago, Lox Lego said:

.... This is just highway robbery. Let’s say the parts cost half that.., so you walk away with half a million dollars Canadian!  You have lost my respect. Sorry that’s just sad...

Being a "pro" advanced builder you should think twice about saying this, considering how hard it is to become a real professional designer. We don´t know the earnings of a (lucky) official TLC designer, especially of those creating the recent unfinished, poor designed and ridiculously overprized big sets.. But you can estimate they are the only ones on the planets being paid fair for their work. And you too now have got the idea that selling instructions isn´t a bad idea at all, instead of inflating the market with free instructions which require tons of work as well.

Edited by brunojj1

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3 hours ago, WvG_853 said:

Fabulous! A real masterpiece! You are really one of my favourite builders.

You will see if this selling scheme works, but I doubt it very much. I would suggest selling the instructions at a premium price of say 100 EUR instead.

This is what I was thinking....

11 minutes ago, brunojj1 said:

Being a "pro" advanced builder you should think twice about saying this, considering how hard it is to become a real professional designer. We don´t know the earnings of a (lucky) official TLC designer, especially of those creating the recent unfinished, poor designed and ridiculously overprized big sets.. But you can estimate they are the only ones on the planets being paid fair for their work. And you too now have got the idea that selling instructions isn´t a bad idea at all, instead of inflating the market with free instructions which require tons of work as well.

Yes there is tons of work put into a build, I absolutely agree. And I don’t doubt that many many hours were spent on such a build. As a pro builder, I get the sale of instructions. The price and small reward. But... as other have said.... there is 1 m-motor. And a battery box. Most expensive parts in a build are usually the motors. I just can see any justification for the price.... let alone the remaining 20 sales with a price jack. Sorry... just my 2 cents 

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Great plane. Unfortunately, instructions will not be available. 50 Euros would be good price. :)

Edited by ifilin

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this is in my opinion a more than perfect technic set. I would love to have this as a set. 

Its a shame you can't sell this design to TLC and then they could on sell to us customers at a more affordable price but more sets of course (I can't afford your asking price) what's a set with 4000 parts worth with not too many PF? $500?

do Lego ideas winners receive gratuities? This would hands down get 10,000 supporters. 

I love how you haven't panelled it all up. Technic should show its bits :wacko:

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To those who don´t know: Jeroen was an official Lego designer for some while. So if he would see any chance to get this produced there, he would have done for sure! So don´t teach him what to do or not. Chances to make this an official Lego set by putting it on Lego Ideas are zero.

A price comparison to any known Technic or USC set is not valid, because these are produced cost efficient in industrial manner and sold by vast numbers, production costs lowered to an unimaginable minimum in relation to store prices! As blakbird already mentioned: the estimated parts costs alone would be around 1,500 USD average BL prices. PF parts value don´t count as heavily in total at a piece count of more than 4,000 to consider, including pneumatics and flex axles.

E.g. why people were asking (and some were paying !) 5,000 USD for the sold out 10179 UCS Millenium Falcon years ago? Because the market price to which people buy and sell, depends on supply and demand situation. If there are only 200 limited Tomcat sets, not many will buy and it´s supposed to be this way! Then, after some while, depending on sales numbers, the designer still can reconsider if to sell the last sets for a higher price, or in opposite lower the price within a certain time span to sell them faster. It´s all his business! So what do others care about and those who wouldn´t buy it anyway for any price?

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1 hour ago, MangaNOID said:

 

Its a shame you can't sell this design to TLC and then they could on sell to us customers at a more affordable price but more sets of course (I can't afford your asking price) what's a set with 4000 parts worth with not too many PF? $500?

 

@brunojj1 you seem to have taken this comment to heart and misinterpreted my meaning.

its a shame the financials are overshadowing this Masterpeice of a MOC.

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31 minutes ago, MangaNOID said:

@brunojj1 you seem to have taken this comment to heart and misinterpreted my meaning.

its a shame the financials are overshadowing this Masterpeice of a MOC.

I´m sorry if you understood it this way, I didn´t take your comment to heart and wasn´t referring to it in general. Rather wanted to explain someone´s reasons for asking a special price for a special set :wink:. You are right: the only thing those fincancials want is to suck your blood and money if they see huge profit in something - Jeroen does not!

Edited by brunojj1

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The only thing I could offer as a suggestion is to hide the pneumatic hose and electrical wires within the stand somehow and to further cover up the power supply as the grey box and orange switch take away from an otherwise masterpiece!  Double wow!

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Thanks for all the positive comments. The pricing certainly has spiked some discussion, so I will comment to that further down in this post, but let me first answer the other questions.

17 hours ago, BrickbyBrickTechnic said:

Just when  I thought you weren't gonna finish this, you did! HoF. This is probably my favorite MOC ever. :wub::wub:

EDIT: Video please!

I will make a video of all the functions, but it will take some time. Days are short here in the Netherlands and I have to rely on natural light for the shooting.

 

17 hours ago, Aventador2004 said:

Definitely hall of fame! Your work continuously amazes me!

Btw, when will your AMG GT R be shown?

Thanks. The AMG is finished and ready for shipment, but my client lives in Puerto Rico and as you can imagine he has other priorities at the moment. I'll post the model when I have shipped it to him, but I have no idea when this will be.

 

13 hours ago, Blakbird said:

I'd be willing to bet that the parts alone are about $1500 at average Bricklink prices based on my building of many such sized models over the years.  For even one of them, you are looking at probably 30 hours in labor to order and track all those parts.  Even if you value your time very little, that is several hundred dollars in labor.  Then to make a kit you also have to sort and pack all those parts which for 4000 parts is probably another 10 hours.  21% of the price (~$700) is VAT which has nothing to do with the model and goes straight to the government.  So the actual "profit" here is probably only a few hundred dollars per model, and that's not accounting for any of the time spent designing it and making the instructions.  As someone who has made a lot of instructions, I can say that there really isn't any money in it.  You never break even for the time spent.

Based on how many people will even buy instructions for a large model like this much less a kit, I'd guess it will take 5-10 years to sell them all.  I don't think any of my instructions have *ever* sold 200 copies, and that's for only a few dollars.

But getting back to the model, it is just incredible.  Really looking forward to the video to see how all those functions work.  I have built a couple of Jeroen's car models and they are top notch.  The F-14 is one of my favorite planes and this is a great rendition.  

I'd like to see a photo of it next to another model for scale because it is hard to understand how big it is.

I'll make photo with some reference for scale. A LEGO Technic figure is about the right scale I think.

 

8 hours ago, Jurss said:

Very good model

but hose wings ... 

Is that a Freudian typo or do you refer to the pneumatic hoses? :laugh: These hoses are tough to work with, they are so out of scale that I normally don't use pneumatics. However in these wings I could not think of another option.

 

2 hours ago, MangaNOID said:

this is in my opinion a more than perfect technic set. I would love to have this as a set. 

Its a shame you can't sell this design to TLC and then they could on sell to us customers at a more affordable price but more sets of course (I can't afford your asking price) what's a set with 4000 parts worth with not too many PF? $500?

do Lego ideas winners receive gratuities? This would hands down get 10,000 supporters. 

I love how you haven't panelled it all up. Technic should show its bits :wacko:

Thanks. If I would put this model on LEGO ideas the first thing that would happen is that I sign away the rights on this model, regardless of the number of votes. And if even the Landrover of Sheepo didn't get through the selection committee I have very little hopes that such a military plane would go through.

Just now, KD123 said:

The only thing I could offer as a suggestion is to hide the pneumatic hose and electrical wires within the stand somehow and to further cover up the power supply as the grey box and orange switch take away from an otherwise masterpiece!  Double wow!

Thanks for the advice. I'll take another look at the stand, there is indeed room for improvement.

 

1 hour ago, brunojj1 said:

To those who don´t know: Jeroen was an official Lego designer for some while. So if he would see any chance to get this produced there, he would have done for sure! So don´t teach him what to do or not. Chances to make this an official Lego set by putting it on Lego Ideas are zero.

A price comparison to any known Technic or USC set is not valid, because these are produced cost efficient in industrial manner and sold by vast numbers, production costs lowered to an unimaginable minimum in relation to store prices! As blakbird already mentioned: the estimated parts costs alone would be around 1,500 USD average BL prices. PF parts value don´t count as heavily in total at a piece count of more than 4,000 to consider, including pneumatics and flex axles.

E.g. why people were asking (and some were paying !) 5,000 USD for the sold out 10179 UCS Millenium Falcon years ago? Because the market price to which people buy and sell, depends on supply and demand situation. If there are only 200 limited Tomcat sets, not many will buy and it´s supposed to be this way! Then, after some while, depending on sales numbers, the designer still can reconsider if to sell the last sets for a higher price, or in opposite lower the price within a certain time span to sell them faster. It´s all his business! So what do others care about and those who wouldn´t buy it anyway for any price?

So a few words on the price. As Brunojj1 so eloquently puts it, it is up to the market to determine whether the price is right. Nobody is forced to buy this and it certainly is not a necessity of life. Most people think the price is too high and I can understand if you feel that way. For me this is also a learning experience. I have not done extensive marketresearch to see what the market is for high-end technical models (if there is such a market at all). Maybe there is nobody in the world interested. If so, I will lose on this deal and I will learn from it for my next project. And maybe there is a market. In which case I will be able to spend significantly more time on designing more models (including models without a commission). I love what I am doing when I am designing with LEGO Technic and finding a way to make a living out of it is an interesting journey and this is a step towards (or maybe not) that goal.

Thanks again for all the positive and constructive comments. Part of the love of what I am doing is coming from that feedback.

Jeroen

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