HydroWorld Outlook

The cool part is, since the 42181's engine pods can rotate a full 360 degrees, it would allow for relatively quick and easy modification to a V-22 Osprey or other tiltrotor aircraft just by replacing the pod thrusters with rotors, swapping the landing legs for landing ger, and maybe replacing the rearmost engines with a tail boom. This adds a lot of value to the set, and for sure I will be getting it.

@SNIPE That's a really cool mod idea you have there. But keep in mind that elongated rotor blades may not clear the rear stabilizer fin when spinning if the tail boom is not extended further back, since the 42145 was originally designed for the shorter previous helicopter blades. And a longer tail would increase weight at the back of the model, so you would likely need to either extend the undercarriage or use thicker wheels for landing gear that can support the additional weight. Plus, the fuselage would likely need to be enlarged or widened substantially to accommodate the extra motors, not to mention incorporate space for the Buwizz 3.0 unit.

In case anyone didn't notice, as I was watching this review, I noticed at playhead 3:25 that the display console inside the rover's cockpit looks shockingly similar to the button arrangement on the LEGO NXT brick. What a fun and clever nod to the Mindstorms theme! :)

That's true. But I'm very happy to see that we're finally getting those Technic ring elements (which were previously only found in LEGO City and Friends sets) in more useful colors with this set. Also, I'm curious to see if there are other applications for the new large Technic hemispheres in this set. If TLG releases them in clear in some point, we could create Gyrospheres with them. Or they could be used as wheels, or maybe even airtanks or floatation devices if the two halves are sealed up with tape (the latter two ideas would be more difficult to execute, but I'm very curious to see if any MOC builders would choose to use them for those purposes). Either way, without a doubt, this set's a sure buy for me.

It's very good to see the VTOL aircraft concept return to LEGO Technic in some form, even though there are no rotors this time. Wait, maybe the engines spin. There are driveshafts inside the turntables that support the engines on the ends of the spaceship's wings. I don't see this feature on the box but maybe that's what the knobs on the inside of the spaceship do.

Your post definitely made my day indeed. It's nice to see those 89509 rotor blades being put to good use again! Great work! :)

The new gearbox elements are a very pleasant surprise for sure. I look forward to seeing how well they will perform in motorized models. Unfortunately, however new parts like these may signal the phasing out and discontinuation of other transmission pieces we had before, like the 3L driving rings and orange wave selectors, and these new parts will start out pretty expensive since they've only been included with one set thus far, so building up-to-date transmissions with these new pieces will not be easy until we start seeing them in more sets.

Well, that said, collectors might be okay with the price. Keep in mind that this an 18+ set, and many sets with this label, including the Eiffel Tower, Ferrari, and Titanic are primarily marketed towards late teenagers and adults who are less likely to care about playability. It costs many hundred dollars to buy a licensed collector's action figure because manufacturers expect that collectors will pay more money for the same item. While I strongly disagree with the price TLG has set for this model, I can only imagine that those same expectations apply here. If people really want the pleasure and comfort of owning the set and experiencing all it has to offer, they'll just have to work that much harder at their jobs so they can cash out the money for it. Honestly, rather than complaining about the direct retail price, I think we'd be better just waiting for the set to go on sale at Amazon or some other outlet. Surely, as we get closer to the 2023 holiday season (which will only be about 4.5 months away when this set releases in the United States), we'll be seeing discounts on this set left and right. And hopefully, once inflation slows down enough for prices to fall (which won't be for a while but will happen) then the cost of this set will be more reasonable.

Nice work so far! I can't wait to see how the final version looks. Also, I have a suggestion for how you could accomplish blade pitch. Maybe if you attach each of the five rotor blades to 12-tooth single bevel gears (using 2 of this part, 2 of this part, and 1 of this part on each rotor blade), with a 20-tooth single bevel gear in the center, you could achieve adjustable pitch on all blades in a compact space. Building the rotor hub should not be that much of challenge using the new starfish piece, which I see you have already done in the pictures posted above. Because you would be using the axle to control blade pitch, you would need to mount the entire rotor assembly on a 28-tooth turntable in order to drive it, which could be accomplished by connecting one arm of the starfish piece directly to the turntable's upper toothed half. Doing all this would enlarge the whole rotor a bit but only slightly. Normally I would not recommend this method for variable-pitch propellers on LEGO Technic models because centrifugal force would easily rip all the blades out while the propulsion motor is spinning them, but because there are no electric motors allowed in this competition, and all functions must be manually-operated, centrifugal force should not factor here. Additionally, if you would like to simulate the collective and cyclic pitch functions of the larger model in your scaled-down version, you could connect the blade pitch control axle (the axle rotating the central 20-tooth gear) to a universal joint so that it can be tilted while rotating. Hopefully these ideas help.

Yes, thank you so much for this thread. I found these tips and tutorials very helpful indeed.

I know I'm not the first person to say this, but it would be really nice if TLG could finally start including physical remotes for the Powered UP system in their motorized sets, or at least include the train remote that comes with some of the LEGO City sets.

This is a pretty impressive model. Very neat little vehicle. :)

The final set looks great and all from the official pictures I now see on the LEGO website, though I am quite a bit saddened by the price tag. The 6 included large angular motors will hugely benefit both the Technic and Mindstorms communities for sure, as these motors were previously only found in two other Technic sets, both of which now discontinued. These motors are essentially the same as their counterparts from the Spike Prime line but come in more neutral colors and can interface with the Technic Large Hub that comes with the 51515 set. More of these motors included in the set means there will be more of them in production, which will hopefully reduce their prices on Bricklink. Plus, we will be getting many large Technic frames in this set, which really excites me thinking about the behemoth B-models the Rebrickable community will almost inevitably come up with for this set. However, while these motors definitely add value to the set, they come at the cost of simplifying the model's mechanical complexity (no transmission driving rings and fewer gears and axles), which may draw many fans away from this set considering its enormous price tag, including myself. Even if I do buy it, I'll probably have to wait until the Christmas holiday sales before purchasing it to save money, because I've heard that a lot of parents with kids who like Technic are already shaking their heads no at this set. At this point, it shouldn't be much longer now before full video reviews go up on YouTube, and then we will all be able to confidently determine whether or not this crane is actually worth the $700 US Dollars TLG claims it to be.

With the final model now revealed, I can now safely say that this set appears to be a mix of both good news and bad news. The good news is, the price seems to have gone down a bit for the same amount of pieces, which means the part value of the set increases and we may no longer have to pay that ridiculous $700 price tag that was rumored previously (even though we cannot be exactly sure of this yet—hopefully I am correct on this). The other good news is that we're getting all those new frame and counterweight pieces, which may find useful applications in MOCs after the set's official release. The bad news is that we're not getting those 7L tracks in a neutral color yet after all, because the pictures make it obvious that TLG has decided to use the plain old 5L-wide tracks, which is fine but definitely raises my concern of the model's stability considering its massive height. Additionally, as Unbrickme has pointed out, there will be no gearbox in this set (like the disappointingly basic 42100 set), and as a consequence we can expect less mechanical complexity for the already steep price that we will be paying to buy this set ($550). In the 42131 set, we had less motors but we also had a gearbox, allowing a greater number of mechanical functions for a lower price ($450), so this set does look like a step backward when taken from an engineering perspective. But I suppose we'll see how well this set performs when it hits shelves in the next few months.

$700 for just 2,882 pieces? That's crazy for a Technic set. You could buy two full Mindstorms kits for $700. If this set had triple that parts count, then a $700 price tag would make a bit more sense, but even so it would still be overpriced, especially considering the giant Control+ flagship sets that cost $450, so I hope that's not this set's official price. If that is the set's actual price, then the final model better show some very, very strong justification for it, or there's a lot of people on this forum who won't be purchasing it, including myself.