Brick Tamland

My first review here on Eurobricks, so bear with me :) I was so excited to build this set I didn't take any pictures of the build, which took about an hour. The pictures are not the greatest quality due to the lighting I have to deal with here. Official Description: Relive movie moments with the LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean Whitecap Bay (4194)! Captain Jack Sparrow and his band of pirates are lying in wait, plotting to capture one of the mysterious mermaids of Whitecap Bay. Hide inside the lighthouse, then use the searchlight to spot them in the murky depths below. Shoot the net from the boathouse cannon when they get close to shore! Beware of the whale oil barrels tipping near the open flames! Front of the box. Back of the box. Two instruction books are included. Also inside are a sticker sheet and a collectible card. There is also a poster. The set contains 6 minifigs including four exclusive to this set. They are all excellent, featuring front and back printing. Both Jack and Scrum feature leg printing as well. The mermaids, Jack, and Phillip feature alternate head printing as well. The mermaids have great hair pieces and carry strands of seaweed. The tails work forwards or backwards which is nice for posing them. From the back. Alternate head prints. Jack's torso is the same as the one found in several of the other sets. He sports his hat and compass in this set. Phillip is wearing a great black torso and the same wig as Will Turner in the Mill set. Phillip is exclusive to this set. Both feature back printing. Back printing and alternate head printing. Scrum is another minifig exclusive to this set. He features a great looking brown torso and leg printing. I think his face is also really cool, with a scruffy looking beard and scar over his eye. The gunner zombie is the same as that found in the other sets. Both feature back printing but no alternate head printing as there isn't any place to hide it. Now onto the rest of the set. The movie trailer hints that Jack must capture a mermaid, and that seems to be the basis for this set. It includes two great black rowboats with lamps, oars, and buckets. It also includes a net with a plastic rope for a minifig to hang on to. The net folds up nicely and allows for the capture of a mermaid! The build for this set is divided up nicely into modules, each with their own bag of parts which makes the build go relatively quickly. The first module is a large 4x4 barrel on a stand. It holds a few black 1x1x1 round bricks and can be tipped over onto a bad guy. Also included are another barrel with a bunch of the new pearl gold coins. As others have mentioned, these look pretty bad when compared to the old pirate coins. Hopefully all the negative feedback will make Lego go back to the chrome gold if/when there is a second round of POTC sets. Pull the pin and the barrel tips over. The lid doesn't always fall off, but its a decent play feature. The lighthouse is the next module in the build. This is one of the highlights of the set in my opinion(pun intended). The build is fairly straightforward with a bit of snot work and some hidden play features. One of the coolest features of this set is the working light at the top of the tower. It uses a lightbrick with a magnifying glass to focus the beam of light. This actually works pretty well. It would be nice if there was a way to keep the light on without having to hold the button down. The tower consists of three floors. On the first floor is a small table with two stools. On the table is one of the new bottles and an astrolabe. The second floor is empty aside from two steering wheels on the wall which don't actually do anything. There is a mechanism on this floor that knocks out the side walls and collapses the top of the tower. I assume this is a reference to something that will happen in the movie, but I haven't seen it yet so I can't say for sure. It easily knocks out the two sidewalls, but the top of the tower only collapses about half the time. The build is very solid, so it stays together when it does fall down. The only pieces that tend to fall off are the two 1x1x1 brown cones on the top that sometimes pop off and go missing. The final two modules of the build are the small connecting room and the cannon building. This portion of the set features the giant cannon mounted on a sliding track. The cannon fires another mermaid catching net. There is a plunger inside the cannon, which when flicked from the rear will fire the net a meter or so. Inside the connecting room are a square barrel with a shovel and pickaxe, and another new bottle. You can see the track system for the cannon and the firing plunger. Pseudo-action shots of the cannon! And finally a shot of the completed set. My Ratings: Minifigs: 9/10 The minifigs are excellent and one of the highlights of the set. Two are duplicates from other sets, but one of these is Jack, so thats to be expected. The mermaids have great head printing and hairpieces that will be great for Mocing. I would give this a 10/10 if the gunner zombie was a different minifig. Parts: 10/10 Lots of dark grey! A light brick, two new bottles, and two of the new sword scabbards. This would make a great parts pack for any castle fan. Build/Design: 9/10 I really like the modular build. There were some repetitive steps and some of the elements are a bit fragile until they're fully assembled. The set is much bigger than it looks in pictures. Since it is supposed to sit on the waters edge, a baseplate would have been nice. Playability: 9/10 Lots of play features. The collapsing tower would be better if it worked all the time. Price: 8/10 I did get this half price at TRU after buying the QAR, so for me it was a bargain. However, at full price I feel it is about $10 too high. Overall:46/50 This is a really cool set overall. It is the biggest of the POTC sets aside from the QAR and features some great minifigs and play features. I bought this set(and the other POTC sets) primarily for moccing, and it really is going to be tough for me to tear this one down. Hopefully everyone likes this review. If you feel there is something I missed, please ask and I'll try to address it.

The capacitor and inductor have no impact on energy efficiency. They simply eliminate ripple in the output current. The energy they store from cycle to cycle is not the same as the energy dissipated by the load, which you seem to be implying is "lost". This is why you get longer battery life at low power. However, I'm done arguing about this. I know what I've stated can be backed up with math, if you choose to believe it its your own decision. My qualifications? Masters degree in Electrical engineering, currently working in the power transmission industry.

Again, you are incorrect. Torque is a product of flux, which is a product of current and inductance. It doesn't work the other way around. You are also wrong about the light bulb. Take your multimeter and try to measure the voltage across it when its not plugged in. Then measure the resistance. For a fixed current, the voltage drop across the bulb is a product of resistance. For a fixed voltage, the current is a product of resistance. The switching converter will generate a constant current regardless of what is connected on the other end(it will actually oscillate slightly as a function of circuit components, but its close to DC). The other components I mentioned do not dissipate energy. Transistors will have a slight leakage, but its so small its negligible. In periodic steady state, the average voltage across an inductor is zero. The average current across a capacitor is zero. Power is equal to current times voltage, so its obvious that neither of these can dissipate power. All of these components are necessary to create a switched converter, so yes, in some form or another, the PF receiver has them. The transistors do the actual switching, the capacitor and inductor filter out high frequency ripple from the current, ensuring you don't destroy your motor. They have no effect on energy efficiency. The point of the converter is not to turn 9V 100ma into 4.5V 200ma, as the power consumed would be equal. The point of the converter is to turn it into 4.5V 100ma and half the power consumption. Its not really all that complicated if you understand switched converters, which you don't(no offense intended). I can recommend some books if you want to learn about them, but it will require a solid Calculus background(Calc IV level) and a good understanding of electromagnetic theory to really get anything out of it.

This is untrue. The amount of power delivered to the load(and hence the energy consumed by the load) is independent of the type of load. Switched DC power converters are immensely more complex and much more expensive than the alternative, which is a voltage divider circuit consisting of a single resistor in series with the load. For a switched converter, you need at minimum, an inductor, a capacitor, and two transistors just for the converter. Then you need a microcontroller to generate the switching commands to implement PWM. To reiterate what I said before, batteries will last longer on low power with a switched converter than they would on high power. I don't mean to seem argumentative, but this is a fact.

True, a very insignificant amount of energy is dissipated inside the power supply. Switched DC converters operate by turning on and off very quickly, on the order of hundredths to thousandths of a second and beyond. The motor only sees the average value of these pulses. There is no excess power dissipated as in a voltage divider circuit because the batteries are constantly being switched on and off. Your multi-meter will measure average values, the only way to see the actual pulses would be to hook up an oscilloscope. The batteries will absolutely last longer running on lower power vs. higher power, that is the point of switched power supplies. If this were not true, no one would spend the money designing and building them. A voltage divider circuit with a fixed resistor or rheostat is way cheaper to design and build.

Fooled around with making a brick built hull, possibly for a pirate ship, although I think the scale might be too small to be appropriate for this theme. I have no idea what to do with the topside, so feel free to throw out some ideas. The bow is a bit chunky in a few sections, but the half plate offset made it difficult to get smooth curves all around. The Fibonacci sequence is present in several portions of the model to attain some curvature. I may redo the bottom portion of the hull with smooth tiles at some point, but I'm not sure its worthwhile for the amount of time it would take.

Dug through some stuff in the attic earlier this week and fished out all of my old pirates stuff. I'll be making some creations in the near future when I get done sorting, but here is a picture of my bluecoat army, with a few redcoats too.

Put together a carriage house to go with the tavern from the London Escape set. I tried to imitate the style of the real set. I'm currently limited to black and grey bricks, with some random accessory pieces thrown in, which is why this MOC lacks any real color. There isn't anything inside at the moment, but it does feature a second floor. The large iron doors open up to fit the small coal carriage inside. This is the first MOC I've put together in real bricks in over 10 years.

These soldiers are garrisoned in a far off corner of the empire. After a fierce band of pirates destroyed the rest of their unit, the remaining red coats sought refuge with the blue coats. Unconcerned with the politics on the other side of the world, the blue coat commander welcomed any able bodied soldier willing to help defend the settlement from the pirates.

I never thought of this, but I switched them out and it looks great, thanks! I'll be posting more pictures soon. I'm using various photos of the real ship and models found on google images for reference. I gave up pretty early on accuracy and have been focusing on just getting the shape and feel of the original. Even at this scale, the build is already over 5000 bricks. To really build an accurate model, the dimensions would have to be approximately doubled in length and width.

Did some work on the mystery ship I teased about in another thread. The ship is (roughly) based on the Vasa, a Swedish 64 gun warship that sunk less than a mile into its maiden voyage. Despite a short life, it is the basis for the Flying Dutchman in the POTC series. The original ship was extremely ornate, which is proving to be challenging to accurately represent. The scale is a bit off, but I had to make some compromises to keep the brick count down and a bit of my sanity. I've finished about 40% of the hull, and I moved on to shaping the stern because I got tired of making individual ribs! Edit: Decorated the stern.

I may put some furniture in the captains cabin when I'm finished with the rest of the ship. Thats probably as far as I'll go though. The new release of LDD added the new hull pieces, so I'm already planning a new project that I can eventually build in real bricks.

Great job! You really captured the look of the real thing. Can't wait to see it completed with sails.

Quick update. Currently working on the curves for the bow of the ship. There are about 20 studs left to complete the hull. Decks have been added and I've started on some of the detailing. Here is a shot of the entrance to the captain's cabin and the stairs to the upper deck. The wheel is temporary. I'd like to sink it into the deck a bit and I may move it to make room for the aft most mast.

That is a huge ship! I think one or two more hull sections would make it look a little more proportional.

This is great! I'd buy this as a set if they sold it.

I use both of these methods to flip the bricks. I sometimes end up with a weird height offset, but the way I place my decks you usually can't tell.

Yes, most of my inspiration came from CGH's frigate thread. I've played around with some other hull designs, but for a curved hull, the jumper plate method seems to work the best. I'd like to add planking some sort of planking texture to the tumblehome, but in LDD everything I've come up with so far looks just as smooth as using bricks. I'd love to put this together for real, but I don't have any bricks, or excess cash to purchase the parts until I finish grad school. So right now this is just a way to kill time and be creative. I should have a massive update coming after next weekend once finals are done.

New to the forum, thought I would introduce myself with a scene I'm working on in LDD. Its a small fishing port based loosely off of the Chestnut Neck Marina in New Jersey, USA. The brick built boats are my design, with swivel and tilt outboard motors, and a cabin on the larger boat. Still to come will be a few more boats, possibly a large trawler type, a restaurant/tackle shop, weigh in scale, and a forklift for lifting the boats into the water. I'll post some more shots of the boats themselves as I finish up the rest of the fleet. An express type fishing boat with twin outboards. A shot of the outboard motors and some interior details. The port so far.

So I completed most of the ship, but I'm not really that happy with the overall shape. The front to back curve doesn't really fit well with the other dimensions so I'm retiring this model. I've started on a much larger LDD ship project that will be planned and modeled after a real ship from the start, so the final results should look much better. Here are the final shots of this one. Heres a teaser shot of the new ship.

Did some more work on this based on the frigate tutorial.

Your technique was my inspiration. Can't wait to see that hull completely finished, its a beauty.

I'll post it on here later tonight or tomorrow when I have a bit more time.

Couldn't wait to design the lobster boat, so here it is. Simple design, like the real thing. Interior and exterior controls, swinging crane to lift the traps with a winch, and a crate of lobsters.

Sticking with the color scheme for now. Here is the final Bertram fully rigged and ready to fish. Front really needed railings, not really happy with these, but its the best I can do at the moment. Inside you can see the controls, a chart table, sink, stove, and table. Added the outriggers, back rigger, fishing poles, net, fighting chair, and some flags from the last successful catch. Added ladders to reach the upper decks and lighting for night fishing. The harbor is starting to look busy. I still have plans for at least one more boat, maybe a Downeast style lobster boat.