BrickMonkeyMOCs

In that case you could switch to two 47905 bricks in DBG to match the colour.

Very nice. I like how you've done the engines. Is it an up or down bracket connecting the nose? Would be good if that could be DBG instead of black. The cheese slopes work really well for the cockpit.

Only four more days to this year's show.

OP updated with fixed pics/links. Wow, those are some cool souvenirs! I'll look forward to seeing a Spooky from you. Your other large scale aircraft are all incredibly detailed and accurate.

Hi Kiwi Builder, You don't need to be a LUG member to attend as an exhibitor. All you need to do is follow the link from this page to complete registration for the show. There is a NZ$10 registration fee for signing up as an exhibitor regardless of whether or not you are a LUG member, but LUG membership itself is free. More info on the 2015 show can be found here: http://lug4x2.org/cbs2015/

Thanks. OP now updated with photos.

Hi all. I have a new military MOC to share. I actually started designing this two years ago, but got sidetracked by work and study. I've finally found the time to finish it and felt the final product was worth sharing here. The model was fully designed in LDraw, and while the retractable landing gear was the biggest challenge, my greater concern was whether or not the wings and tail section would support their own weight. Luckily everything worked out fine, and the end result is quite sturdy. Two half-pins needed modifying, but I consider this departure from purism a small price to pay for a smoothly operating rear ramp mechanism. The model features a BrickArms minigun for the 25mm Gatling gun, along with a brick-built 40mm Bofors cannon and 105mm howitzer. Click pics below to visit the full album on Flickr. Features: Spring-loaded retractable undercarriage Turning props Functional flaps Opening forward cabin doors Opening rear ramp Aimable weapons 6-man crew Detailed cockpit and interior accessible via detachable roof panels. Around 1850 pieces, measuring 82 studs wide by 68 studs in length.

Well, this is disappointing. From the prelim images this was a definite purchase. Now you couldn't pay me to take it. As some have said, this looks like a complete rebuild rather than a modification, and I don't see anything that has changed for the better. Hideous nose, too-tall headlights, boxy cockpit area, square wheel arches, poor rear panelling, and no fin! Lego have certainly dropped the ball on this one. I find it hard to believe that the same designer could be responsible for both versions. Of course we can still design our own MOC instead (or heavily mod the set), but the prelim model would have made for a wonderful set. :(

I can confirm that there were plenty of MOCs on show in addition to the technic set collection. I have pics from the entire show, but the only ones I have online to link to are of my own table.

You should take a look through Snuffwuzz' Flickr photostream. He has tons of excellent military LDD designs.

Thank you all for your positive comments and feedback! I realize military MOCs tend not to get that much attention around here, so I appreciate all responses. Thank you very much! You're right that this vehicle hasn't been built often before. There are a couple of quality builds out there that helped inspire this model though, so I'd like to mention the excellent models of George Georgiou (G2) and Daniel Zayac. Thanks, but no, I haven't played C&C. The model was based on reference pictures of the real world vehicle, though the most useful pics I found were actually of a beautifully detailed and painted plastic scale model. Yeah, that's probably a fair call. I used all the space available, and I chose to make the engine similar in design to that in my Humvees, but a different design might have looked better. I didn't find any reference pictures of the real vehicle's engine bay to base it on though. Yes! The missile certainly detaches! It sits on a small section of exposed technic axle at the base, and connects to the main body of the vehicle by a single stud when lowered. You can lift it straight out of the housing from the vertical position.

Hello all. Thought I'd share my latest creation. A Scud missile Transporter/Erector/Launcher, designed in LDraw and now built in the brick (click on any of the pics to see more in the Flickr set): Features: - Spring-loaded & pneumatically-dampened missile raising mechanism. - 4-Wheel steering (controlled from rear). - Opening doors, roof sections, storage hatches (for BrickArms), and engine cover. - Functioning rear stabilizers. - Missile launch control (left side) and crew rest quarters (right side). The Flickr set also contains a short video demonstrating the steering and missile mechanism. This has been my most complicated and ambitious LDraw design to date, but I'm very pleased with the end result. Comments, questions, and criticisms are welcome.

I just bought this yesterday. First day of its release (here in Japan) and I got the last one in the store. It's a very clever build, utilizing every cubic millimeter of space inside the shuttle to fit the two figs, retractable landing gear, robotic arm, and satellite. There aren't too many stickers, and they are of the higher quality longer-lasting type (i.e. trans rather than opaque). And the functional flaps on the wings were a cool surprise. This is a really great set, and very reasonably priced.

My suggestion: Part No: 4150 Name: Tile, Round 2 x 2 New color: Dark Stone Grey/Dark Bluish Grey (#199)

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but I thought I'd point out that the 8128 speeder set will be the first time we've seen the 61678 curved slopes in dark stone. I've been eagerly awaiting that particular part/color combination for my DPVs (see the first of my sig pics below) since October last year. Edit: Oops, I see the same part is also available now on the 8095 set. I guess I should have been paying closer attention.

Wow! TLC really hit the ball out of the park with this one. An excellent combination of functionality and beautiful design. I'll be picking this one up regardless of cost. Thank you Lego!

My parts orders all arrived, and I've finished building the OpFor Technical: LINK TO SET I had a minor problem with the way the ninja headwraps aren't fully compatible with the minifig seats, forcing the figs to lean forwards, which required some modification to the rear gun mounting to give it enough room to tilt without hitting the gunner's face. But otherwise it came together as planned.

Beautiful. I saw this on Flickr a few days ago, but didn't want to be the millionth person commenting on the camo. It really is great though. At first glance seeing the top view thumbnail it almost looked painted. Did you have any difficulties with the structural integrity of the wings using so many small plates? Or is it all large plates underneath? As usual, there's a lot of great and accurate detail here. Especially the angled tail, radar antennae, and engine cowling. I have no problems with the use of a trans stand for balance, but I am curious as to how the real aircraft maintained its balance on the ground. As I'm sure you've researched it, perhaps you could answer that for us? What's next? Are you planning on doing more of these WW2 aircraft?

Thanks for your comment LT. I would surely like to I'm a conformist!, but I'm afraid my economic situation just took a nosedive, so these may be my last MOCs for a while. Thanks. The tail rotor solution was provided by Aleksander Stein at Flickr, and I borrowed it from Chandler Parker's recent Apache model. It is certainly a very clever and effective solution for replicating the odd 55/125deg angles for the blades. The chaingun is attached to a 2x2 turntable via 1x1 clips, and can both rotate and tilt up and down. As for the color, I've used new dark bley (dark stone) to match the rest of my military MOCs, but I think old dark grey is a closer match for olive drab than dark green. Check out Ralph's larger AH-64A (linked to in the OP) as an example of this.

Wow, that looks really great! And thanks for the credit. I like how you've used click hinges for the landing skids (it's a clever way of attaching the passenger troops), and the use of a dish for the tail rotor is very nice too. If I were to offer any suggestions it would be that the main rotor blades look a little short while the front of the landing skids look a bit long. For the latter you might want to change the front black antennas for black lightsaber bars.

I recently finished building my largest LDraw designed military MOC to date - an AH-64D Apache Longbow. The Apache has been done many times in Lego by many builders, and I knew from the start that I would be incorporating many of the excellent design ideas and solutions from other builders, so first here is a list of some of the best Apaches that I am aware of and which have inspired this build: Bryce Rollins Mad Physicist (Ralph Savelsberg) (larger scale) Szabi1029 Zackhariah Mondayn00dle (microscale) I ended up borrowing ideas mostly from Szabi1029 (the overall shape, the engines, the chain gun attachment, and the main gear) and Chandler Parker (the weapons, tail rotor [courtesy of Aleksander Stein], the main rotor blades, and the mast-mounted radar). But that said, I also built it from scratch in LDraw and incorporated many solutions and ideas of my own. The Apache was also one of my favorite MOCs as a child, so it was fun to make a much better model without being limited by parts or color. Click on the pics to access the full Flickr gallery. The model includes many features, such as: - Swiveling and tilting chain gun. - Detailed 2-man cockpit. - 8 Hellfire missiles, 2 rocket pods, and 4 Stinger AAMs. - Detachable engines and sidepods. - Realistically asymmetrical sidepod design. - Main rotor rotating freely around a stationary mast-mounted fire control radar. - Adjustable rear horizontal stabilizer. It may not be my most original creation, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out, it was terrifically fun to build, and it sure looks nice alongside my Little Birds and other military MOCs. ************************************************************* I've also completed the LDraw design work on an OpFor Technical based on the pickup truck in the game Battlefield 2 Special Forces. I have ordered parts and hope to have it built in 2-3 weeks. It features a detailed engine and interior, opening front bonnet and doors, and a rotating and tilting .50cal machine gun in the back.

Great work as always Ralph! The real world vehicle itself isn't the most exciting thing to look at, but you've represented it perfectly and included an impressive amount of detail. The camo looks really great here, yet it's the opening doors and the engine detail that make this one stand out to me. The white and orange look a little odd in there, though I'm guessing you've taken that from the real vehicle (?). I'm not a huge fan of the maxifigs, but I have to admit that they're very nicely done, especially the control lever headsets, and the brick built LMG.

Nice work. I like how you've managed to fit two figs in the driver's compartment there. And the passenger's side clip-mounted LMG looks great. But I think the gunner's platform would look a lot better above the engine at the back rather than on top of the roll cage.

I've been using LDraw for a long time, but have only just tried to use the LGEO parts library. I downloaded the files and put them in my LDraw directory. I then opened L3PAO and told it where to find the LGEO files. But now I get an error message in L3PAO saying: "Certain .TAB files needed for LGEO substitution appear to be missing. L3PAdd-On will function properly, but LGEO library substitution may not be available. You may want to check your LGEO install." But what are the missing .TAB files? There is no mention of these anywhere in the LGEO documentation. Can anyone help me out?

Nope, they were used in the 2009 8169 Lamborghini Gallardo Racers set. Nice review. The set looks good, except for that shallow-steep-shallow inverted sloping on the rear underside. I would definitely change that.