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Captainowie

Eurobricks Knights
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Everything posted by Captainowie

  1. Captainowie
    Hmm, they should be - they're deeplinks from my brickshelf gallery. You ought to be able to see them all here http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=544754 Is anyone else not able to see the pics? Unfortunately my selection of flexible parts is pretty meager. Besides, I actually rather like the shape of the cockpit - it's not too far off: Besides, it gives a natural handle to the model - if I used flex parts it wouldn't be sturdy enough to be picked up from the roof. Appreciate the suggestion though. Owen.
  2. Captainowie
    Ok, so I've done the things I've said I'd do. I also put 3x5 curved halfbeams at the wingtips - is this what you meant captainmib? It's now down to 207 parts. I'm sure I can find 7 parts that don't strictly need to be there! Who really needs navigation lights, anyway? I must say, though, that I do like the way you roll your finger across the rubber knob at the back to extend/retract the landing gear. Are there any improvements I should make before I try to find some yellow panels and beams?
  3. Captainowie
    I've looked at that, and it's an easy way to save 20-30 parts. However, I can't think of a way to keep it within the one-stud thickness of the rest of the wing. Still, I might have to just accept this.
  4. Captainowie
    Nice work. Exactly! Too many posts have been "These models are so good. I don't stand a chance, so I won't enter". If the main reason you enter a contest like this is to win a prize, then you're doing it wrong.
  5. Captainowie
    Oh. Right. I had wondered what "rotating handle bars" were!
  6. Captainowie
    And it has come in at 273 parts. Not as bad as I was fearing, but still way too many. I can think of a couple of ways to get the part count down: I could make it fixed gear - that would remove a lot of the complexity around the middle, and allow me to build a simpler, nicer-looking cabin (though I'm usually much better at making things work than making them look pretty). However, the retractable gear is the primary function of the model. Or, I could make the user turn the prop with their finger, rather than with a knob at the back of the plane. This keeps the landing gear retractable, but may not contribute enough to the partcount reduction. Or, I could make it weaker - take away the third or fourth connection point between sections, etc. What do you think? Edit: What I'll probably do is revert to a finger-powered propeller/engine, and move the gear knob to the back (where the propeller knob was). That way, I get to keep the retraction function, and I get to simplify the cabin. It's a shame though, because you could get a decent swish out of the prop with the way I had it geared!
  7. Captainowie
    I'm not entirely sure I'd want to be walking behind that thing - it'd put my feet too close to some nasty-looking whirling blades! Nice rendering in LEGO though. Owen.
  8. Captainowie
    Well, I've fleshed out the rest of the plane. Don't pay too much attention to the colours - I'd have to scavenge from other models to get the yellow beams and panels, so I'm going to wait until I'm happy with the design before I do that. The fore wheel extends/retracts the undercarriage, the aft wheel turns the prop and engine. The control surfaces are movable, and the tail skid moves with the rudder. I've gone with an all-moving tailplane (stabilator), and combination flaps/ailerons (flaperons) for ease of construction. I particularly didn't want to have to figure out a mechanism that moved the ailerons in opposite directions, so I combined them with flaps so that they could reasonably be at most positions independently. What I need to do now is take it apart to do a piece count. Based on the pictures/part counts of some of the other models, I'm probably looking at about 350 parts, but we'll see how we go! It certainly looks larger than an official "mini" model would be. Owen.
  9. Captainowie
    I suggest that the easiest way around this is to disallow pneumatics altogether. What's been the smallest set with a pneumatic system? I'll wager it's got a part count much higher than 200. Incidentally, 8455, the king of pneumatic sets, is one set that required the builder to cut the tubes to length.
  10. Captainowie
    Perhaps that's why you don't ever see pneumatic parts in the smallest official sets. No. It's in the rules explicitly: "Ropes/Strings, rubber bands and pneumatic tubing should be official LEGO parts."
  11. Captainowie
    I figure I'd better get in with a WIP topic in case someone else has the same idea as me and claims I copied them :-) This is very preliminary, but here's what I've got so far. Mini Crop Duster. Features (hopefully I can get them all in!): "Remote" controls * Retractable undercarriage * Engine and propeller Local controls * Flight surfaces * Steerable tail skid/wheel It's going to have to be yellow, because most of my other colours are locked up in other models at the moment, and since crop dusters seem to be predominantly yellow tail-draggers (albeit with fixed undercarriage), it seems a natural choice. If all goes to plan, I'll finally be able to find a use for the panel fairings from 8455!
  12. Captainowie
    You shouldn't let that stop you - I'm not intending to let it stop me!
  13. Captainowie
    This is exactly how I imagined it would work. It's nice to know I was on the right track! Yep, them's the standards we're referring to. It was never released or endorsed by TLG, it's just something that Steve Hassenplug and friends made. Here is the LUGNET thread that kicked it off.
  14. Captainowie
    They look kinda out of place in a predominantly yellow/black/grey model, but it really does make sorting them after disassembly so much easier.
  15. Captainowie
    Thanks for that dr_spock. I would very much like one day to participate in something of that magnitude. I have to admit, though, that it's much easier to just make it work in one way than to ensure that every module adheres to the standard so that they're all interchangeable. Having to turn corners while keeping the baseplates aligned while at the same time keeping the interesting part of the module on the outside of the loop was tricky. How do you manage power supply? If each module follows the standard, then each module will need its own motor, which seems inefficient (I use a drive-shaft that provides motion to several modules at once). Do you have banks of battery chargers going to replace flat batteries? Or do you make use of mains power directly? H. They are, as Akeyzerr says, known as Zamor spheres, they seem to be LEGO's go-to projectile. I acquired through a program that rhymes with BugHulk. I would definitely recommend against using these balls in GBC, because they have a little divot that tends to be problematic - if a ball stops on the divot, it takes a fair bit to get it moving again. I used silicone spray on this one for the first time. I haven't yet unpacked the LEGO box from the trip, but first indications are that there is much less ABS dust than my previous display.
  16. Captainowie
    I displayed this GBC at an event a few weekends ago in Adelaide, Australia. The engine you see at ~48 seconds is a W16, but you can only see the top 8 cylinders because of the camera angle. Some questions to anyone who has participated in those large group GBCs that you find on YouTube, the ones with a hundred modules. Do they run the whole weekend non-stop? Or periodically (like, for 10 minutes every hour)? Or just once, for half an hour or so once it's all been put together? If it's not "just once", how do you manage modules that might not be quite as reliable as they should be? Or is it just me that has issues with reliability? Conversely, if it's not "non-stop" how do you manage crowd expectations? Is there one person who's in control, and can order a troublesome module to be removed from the Contraption? Or do all the builders need to be there the whole time in case something goes wrong with their module? Again, this is something of a moot point if making reliable modules is easier for everyone else than for me. Owen.
  17. Captainowie
    But according to that very article, no physical movement of the stone is required - all I have to do is have it properly recorded that the stone belongs to you now. You are then free to move it yourself if you so desire. :-)
  18. Captainowie
    No problem. If anything needs further explanation, feel free to PM me.
  19. Captainowie
    I've read sources suggesting that even the load of the PSU's cooling fan is sufficient for this purpose. Your mileage may vary though. I did something similar a few months ago - write-up is here Owen.
  20. Captainowie
    A bit old now, but the first entry on this page http://www.andrewlipson.com/lego.htm should do what you want (links to a .dat file, so you'll need a LDraw viewer to see details). It really depends on what you mean by "compact" though. Owen.
  21. Captainowie
    Glad to be of service! Now, it's only because you said that I'm mentioning this, but you might want to re-write your code so that you only have to do one operation per conversion. For example, your conversion from LDU to either of the track links currently uses three operations, but only the LDU value ever changes, so you could do the computation for the conversion factor only once, instead of every time. For the small track link, then, this would reduce to 17.33 or, if you don't want to limit your precision you could use 52/3. That said, the performance gain you'd get would be immeasurably small, so there's probably little point, other than neater code. I'd also redo the conversion factors for the imperial units. In your Inch conversion you are using the approximation for LDU-to-cm, and the approximation for cm-inch. It could be that the inaccuracies for the two approximations cancel each other out, but it could also be that they make each other worse. In the LDraw spec the approximation is 1 inch = 64 LDU, whereas 25*2.54 = 63.5 (over a foot that adds up to 6 LDU discrepancy - almost a whole plate thickness). This one is a little more insidious, but in the grand scheme of things probably isn't going to cause anyone too much grief. Feel free to ignore either or both suggestion. Owen.
  22. Captainowie
    Do you have some way to limit the travel of the turntable? I imagine that it would be rather unstable if the bucket got all the way around to the back. That said, it's a beautiful little model. Owen.
  23. Captainowie
    If rounding is a problem, then perhaps you could use some really small unit as your base, instead of studs. Something like LDU perhaps. Come to think of it, LDU might be a good unit to add.
  24. Captainowie
    Exactly. That machine is a perfect example of using standard gears to get non-standard gear ratios. Sometimes the "imagine it" part requires a bit more creative thinking than usual, but there will almost certainly be a way to progress to the "build it" part. Of course, if you start imposing constraints like "it has to be able to handle enough torque" and "it has to be made with the components I currently own or can easily get" and "it has to be small enough to fit on my workbench" then it gets a bit trickier! :-)
  25. Captainowie
    If you can imagine it, you can build it!
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