dhc6twinotter

It's always great seeing your various builds, Jeroen. Top quality stuff! Helicopter MOCs are always great to see! I like how you've built the swash plate. How is the tail rotor built?

I really like all the functions you've fit in! I think road graders are probably some of the most difficult types of construction equipment to replicate with LEGO. Nicely done!

Yes, but if you're running the motor through a gearbox before it gets to the steering rack, you will have a lot of backlash just from the nature of the clutch gears. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the steering is going to be all over the place if it's run through a gearbox, especially with a servo. How well does the steering work on 42070? I've never seen that set in person, but that has steering going through a gearbox. There's no servo in that set, but it seems like there would be quite a bit of backlash.

I hand't thought about running the gearbox off the same motor as the stabilizers. I like that idea! That makes a lot of sense. My only concern would be running the steering through the gearbox. There's a lot of slack with current clutch gears, and I don't think return-to-center servo functionality would work that well for the steering. This is why I figured a dedicated motor for steering. But, maybe if six motors were used, along with your idea of connecting the stabilizers to the gearbox, the steering would have it's own dedicated motor and we could then have another dedicated motor for one of the backhoe functions. That would leave us with one motor for steering, one motor for gearbox/stabilizers, one motor for one of the backhoe functions, and three motors for the other six functions (drive, bucket and backhoe functions). I don't think fitting the five or six motors would be an issue, but finding space for two hubs would be tricky. I played around with some PF stuff, and I think the best option would be to mount the two battery boxes above the rear diff, and under the cab floor (the battery boxes could even be the cab floor). The motors and gearbox could fit in front and just below the rear diff. It would be a very dense set, but I think it's all very doable. Then, along with the above, the backhoe could have AWD with planetary hubs, pendular front axle, smaller version of the Xerion tires on the front, and even a blinky LED strobe light on the roof. Might even fit a fake engine! Make it all bright light orange too. That would be a sweet set! I've never spent more than $230 USD on LEGO, but I'd drop $350 for that! Hey TLG, if you're reading this, I'll build a prototype for you all!

Personally, I'd love to see a full remote controlled backhoe. If a gearbox were used, all functions could be done with 6 motors (4 motors going through gearbox). That would give all the basic backhoe functions--drive, steer, stabilizers, two movements for the front bucket, four movements for the rear bucket, plus a motor for the gearbox. The steering and gearbox would have their own dedicated motors, and the other four motors would run everything else through a simple two position gearbox. Such a model could potentially be less parts intensive than the excavator, and price point may be about $350-400.00 USD. I would also love to see a new flagship tow truck, and such a tow truck could also be built to be remote controlled, but I think I'd actually prefer a model with lots of functions manually controlled with bi-directional gearing and a single motor. I would absolutely love it if I could work for LEGO and design such a model for them! That would be so fun! It could have like 12 motorized functions.

Nothing there excites me too much. It's hard for me to get excited over more cars and off-road vehicles. Maybe the 2nd half will have more machinery.

Personally, I don't like having the receivers and battery boxes combined into one part. If four ports is all you need, than this might work fine for you, but in my opinion, this is the downside to Buwizz and PU. I'm thinking about buying some Sbricks just because I can have three Sbricks (12 ports) powered off of one PF battery box. I never have room for three battery boxes, so the Sbrick is the better bluetooth solution for my needs. That all being said, I do plan on getting a PU hub and a couple motors, but at this point, I'm not going to invest into PU heavily. Too many drawbacks so far.

This is an excellent MOC! Road graders are not easy. I've been building one off and on for nearly five years. Great work here, and I like the smaller scale too!

This looks fantastic! I like a great airplane MOC! It's going to look great in DBG too. How's the CG going to be? It looks like all the motors and BB are mounted in the rear, and I'd be concerned with the plane being tail heavy. Looks like a great build!

This is a beautiful crane! Superbly built, with some great features. Those stabilizers are great, and I love that you've also added a fake engine to the superstructure too! Just out of curiosity, what does the mLA connected to the PF switch do, and what is the m motor in the superstructure for? @suffocation Sorry to hear how hard your region has been hit by COVID. I drove around northern Italy last June, and it's a beautiful area with lovely people.

I just received the summer catalogue. The Sian is on the front cover, as well as the first two pages of the catalogue. The following four pages are all Technic, although no new sets. This is the first time, in a long time, that I recall ever seeing a Technic set on the front page of a catalogue. The Technic sets always seemed to be buried towards the back of the catalogue. It's nice to see Technic on the cover and first six pages of the catalogue.

I'm not entirely sure I understand what the suspension has to do with the LAs. The forces being exerted on the LA is the same, regardless of whether or not shocks are used (well unless you drop something, in which case shocks might help). My original plans with the plane design was to include a couple of stiff shocks on the main wheels. These shocks would have replaced the grey 7L beams in the landing gear mechanism seen in the video. The rest of the mechanism would have stayed the same, and the weight of the plane would have still been on the plane's frame, rather than the LA. I abandoned the shocks because I quickly realized the plane was too heavy for only two shocks, and I didn't have time to work out a different solution. Sorry, I didn't see any comment about you wanting to have various positions. I assumed it was just an up or down scenario. Do you have to use an LA? Why not just use a rack and worm gear? Then you don't have to worry about internal clutches. Lego set 8297 Off Roader has motorized adjustable height suspension. It might be worth a look for some inspiration.

Hey Mark, I think what Steph77 is referring to is the fact that the V22 not only has collective and cyclic, but it also tilts the rotor hubs as well. From what I can tell, that is how yaw in vertical flight mode is achieved. What I haven't figured out is if that is mechanically configured to do so, or if the tilt is just a result of the blades on one side of the head producing more lift than the blades on the other side. From the little bit I've read, this is achieved mechanically. I don't know how that can be achieved with LEGO, but it's a fun thought experiment. I spent a good bit of time at work today sketching and thinking about how that might be achieved with LEGO. I didn't get anywhere. I agree though, I think push rods may be a good solution for bringing controls through the tilt mechanism. It sounds like a fun project, and I might have to tinker with the LEGO a bit to see if I can somehow come up with a solution. It's quite fascinating.

I agree with this, and that would be my suggestions as well. Try getting rid of the grey half-bushings in the photo above, and move the LA back (towards the gear) at least 1 stud. 1.5-2 studs may even be better. When the suspension is loaded, it will force the already retracted LA to want to retract more, which of course it can't do. I agree with this as well, and that's a good design. I did something similar on my Piper Super Cub and the retractable landing gear in the floats. See video below starting at about 4:02. The mini LAs retract the landing gear, but the over center pivot (red 3x3 arch pieces) transfers the weight of the model from the LAs to the frame. The landing gear was strong enough to support the weight of the plane despite only using two mini LAs for all four wheels.

Great to see you around again Eric! You've provided so much great info to the Technic community, and it's great to have you back again.

It sounds like you have a fun project on your hands. What was it you needed help with?

Years ago, I build a Case Steiger using LAs for the steering. This was before the mini-LAs came out. This was the first MOC I built after coming back from my dark ages around 2010.

Yes, you're right. I wasn't clear in what I was saying. Sorry. What I should've said is that the interface is poorly implemented. I will admit though, I haven't used it, and my opinion is just based on what I've read elsewhere. I've built MOCs with 9 motors, but I only controlled 3-4 motors at a time. I'm currently building a MOC with 11 PF motors (including seven servos), four IR receivers, three sets of PF lights and Two PF switches; all connected to two PF AA battery boxes. I'd only have, at the most, five motors running at once, and that would be very briefly. Building that would require four PU hubs, which would be impossible due to space. To me, the biggest limiting factor of PU is only having 4 ports on the hub. I love that PU can connect four hubs together, but I have never built a MOC that would have the room for four hubs. For me to fully embrace PU, I would have to see the following: -A way to have at least eight ports per battery box by either (1) A new hub with eight ports (even if it only allowed max of four ports powered at once), (2) separate bluetooth receivers with four ports each that can plug into a hub, or (3) an adapter that would allow port stacking on the current hubs (even if it meant the motors become dumb motors) -Much lower price for motors, or the introduction of cheaper dumb L and XL motors -Extension Cables (which I'm sure are coming) -Improved PU app interface (which I'm sure is also coming) The first two points are the most important to me. I don't see myself investing in PU unless those happen. I would love to have 16 ports with only two hubs. That would be sweet. And cheaper motors. Just my $.02.

Holy smokes, those are some steep prices! The more I hear about PU, the less I'm inclined to convert over from PF. The lack of port stacking, lack of extension cables, lack of programable interface, and larger battery boxes makes it all seem pointless to "upgrade". I've been a Lego purist, but seeing the poor implementation of PU makes me want to have a closer look at the third party options.

Pretty neat set, and I'm actually surprised to see Lego offer a V-22. I'm not totally sold on the color scheme, but I do think mixing LBG and DBG on the body is interesting. As far as functions go, I'd be fairly certain of the following: -Retractable landing gear -Opening rear hatch -Tilting rotors (possibly in conjunction with moving flaps) -Powered rotors -Center mounted hoist in the floor (it's a rescue aircraft after all) I don't see any other functions. Some sort of collective control would be awesome, but I don't see that. I also don't think the wing folds (swivels). The wing looks to have some dihedral (cool!), and there also appears to be some diagonal bracing between the fuselage and wing. Both would make a swiveling mechanism very difficult. I'm happy to be wrong though.

Very, very cool! Differentials are my favorite Lego part, and I love seeing the different applications they are used in. Super cool.

My assumption is that the clutch gear and catch are there so that when the PU motor is connected, you can keep the motor running all the time and use the lever to disengage/engage the ride. A nice feature. Perhaps I missed it, but how do the front doors open? Is there a knob on the side of the building?

There is also this worm gear. For whatever reason, it was only briefly used. It's the same diameter as the 2L worm gears, but the gear itself is only 1L long. There are 1L bushings on either side so total length is 3L.

Even though I really liked the idea of olive green, I do like the lime green color as well. I'm not a fan of how the front corners are made, but otherwise, this looks really great. I'm hopping for some new wheel hubs that work with the new, stronger CVs, and allow for a better turning radius. Like AllenP, I'm not a huge fan of the color vomit, but I don't mind it as much now as I used to. I'm ok with it as long as it's not visible on the finished model. Regarding real vehicles and color coding, I've run across some color coded parts on my vehicles. For example, older Toyotas often use different color fuel injectors to help differentiate their size. I've seen wire connectors in different colors too. Old Chevy transmissions had color coded gears in the transmissions for the cable driven speedometers. Different ratios had different colors. Anyway, this set looks really nice! Too expensive for me, but I'm sure many out there will enjoy it! I'll enjoy whatever new pieces this set has to offer.

I'm generally not a fan of all the random colors TLG introduces in the Technic lineup, but I do really like the olive green. I think a new supercar in olive green with the gold rims would look really nice. That being said, I won't buy it. Technic sets are becoming far too expensive for me, and I prefer building MOCs anyway. Plus, I prefer construction equipment over super cars anyway. I'm still excited to see what this car has to offer though! It should look great!