howitzer

Walking vehicles exist in real life, for example this tree harvester: https://blog.machinefinder.com/3255/john-deere-walking-harvester Not that they're common, but I see no reason why walkers should be excluded from this contest. I'll be watching this entry with interest, walkers are really hard to do well especially when no third party parts are allowed!

That looks like a really great part, there's a severe shortage of parts for half stud offsets which this would help a lot. It also looks like it could fill the place of O+O-crossblock in some places, which would be great.

This is what I too fear is happening. The competition is really rough, and while TLG's quality is still best in the market, the difference is nowhere near what it was a decade ago, the parts from competing brands are getting good enough that you mostly can't tell the difference. Meanwhile TLG is having their own quality issues (colour consistency is often mentioned but there are other things too) and this coupled with their pricing is driving many customers away. The brand is still really strong though, so there still could be time to fix their current problems and change the corporate culture so that it allows them to keep ahead of the competitors. I hope they are able to do this change.

That's a great clarification, because my first thought was a ski lift, though I couldn't fathom how to actually build it (the slope and all). But yeah, just vehicles makes for a better contest. No idea if I'll participate myself, with time being very constrained around this time of the year for me, but I'll make sure to follow the progress of others!

Would be really dumb if they weren't in the same scale...

Something like that, yes.

I think this or similar idea has been discussed earlier. The problem here would be defining the rules so that you couldn't just pick your favourite car/whatever and then find a fiction in which it's depicted in some way - if absolutely anything from any fiction were allowed, this would become almost limitless contest where anything goes, and I don't think that's a good idea.

I don't think that's really a problem as many other sets can't really do any of what their real life counterparts can either (just look at every aircraft set or most watercraft sets or most of the agriculture machinery). For most Technic builders it's enough that the functions are there even when you can't really use them properly.

There's never been a proper grader so that's my wish for a flagship-scale Technic set. Though I doubt it'll ever happen that scale considering the complexity. Perhaps it could also be conceived around 1000-2000 part range as a manual/pneumatic model in which case it would still probably be better than any C+ flagship could ever be. A proper backhoe would also be great, regardless of license. Something like 8455 but more modern.

Actually 4 pairs of mirrored parts last year, three pairs of panels plus Daytona rims. Grouping parts together beside the mirrored ones doesn't seem right considering that it's Lego where practically any part can be used in multiple ways, except when they come pre-assembled (like motors or pneumatic cylinders). Same for so-called single-use parts, as there has been numerous instances of seemingly single-use part being used in a creative ways beside the original purpose. I'm not saying there isn't parts that are in practice "single-use" (who the hell would use a Mindstorms hub as anything other than a Mindstorms hub) but those tend to be pretty special cases with very good reasons for their difficulty in repurposing. Tyre/rim combinations are definitely not something to group together, as sometimes rims get to be used alone and most of the time there's multiple rims that fit a tyre or vice versa.

I tested them and indeed the new cylinders move with less resistance. The DBG cylinder extends and retracts with 3 full strokes of the large pump, while the yellow one extends with 5 and retracts with 4 strokes. I don't know if it's because the old ones have been worn out in use though or perhaps the lubricant has stiffened over time. The inlet holes seem to be identical in size.

I must disagree with you here, the Perseverance rover is easily the best set of 2023, with its ingenious steering mechanism and other functions. It's also quite affordable mid-size set. The looks is faithful to the real thing, which might contribute to the perception of it looking like an "unstable, janky mess" but that's what real life space exploration tends to be.

Too many cars indeed. The only Technic set aside the smallest ones I've bought is the Perseverance rover, which is great but alone not enough to make the year great. Before the Lieb crane was revealed I thought I'd want to buy it, based just on the knowledge that it's a big crawler crane - but that decision was quickly reversed after it was revealed and I saw the price. So if you're a car person, this year is undoubtedly among the best but for others it's not as far as sets are considered. However, the number of new parts and colours is huge and really lifts this year up in terms of goodies for MOCing. Many many new panels and colours, and then there's the new gearbox parts which open up a lot of new options for all kinds of builds. Even the Liebherr boom parts are nice, making building of large scale cranes easier. So all in all it's pretty divisive year, with both ups and downs to a significant degree.

Yesterday I went to a local Lego event, the largest of its kind in Finland with few tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of exhibitors with their builds. Lots of stuff to see, but relevant to my interests in Technic were the sets which I don't own, as many people had brought out their collections. It was nice to see for example every supercar set since the beginning of Technic, side-by-side. Sadly, nobody had brought the Liebherr crane though as I would've been curious to see how it looks like in real life. There weren't much of other cranes or other complex machinery either. Some really nice scale models though, both in System and in Technic and there was also a sort of GBC, operated by single person, and it took the form of a ball-race where 20 uniquely coloured balls are run through the machinery and spectators get to guess which gets to the finish fastest. All in all it was a nice event to visit, though very crowded, as the popularity was apparently much greater than what organizers expected. For the event next year I think I'll make an attempt to participate as an exhibitor.

This is really cool and impressive! Somewhat reminds me of the loop rollercoaster set (10303) but it's obvious that the official set wouldn't just turn into a GBC with few simple modifications, rather one would need to be built completely from the ground up, as you have done here.

I guess you have better stocked craft stores there, though it appears that you also didn't find a good substitute to the official cord. Sewing thread is indeed too thin and hence weak, as it's only spun and not braided. I guess building a braiding machine could work, but it feels a bit too much of an effort just to get some thread...

I've looked up for those but I've had trouble finding cords of right thickness in sensible quantities (tens of metres or more rather than couple of metres) and yeah, they tend to have annoying colours like white or red.

Do you happen to have firsthand experience on these cords, do they feel and act the same as the official Lego cord?

I would be interested as well, the official Technic cord is really great as it doesn't get easily tangled and is quite strong and also nice looking, but unfortunately the lengths available in sets are very limited.

Funny that they're releasing a Mars exploration rover when they released a Mars exploration rover just this year... But I don't mind.

I'm curious about that set, seems like some sort of marble labyrinth thing. I wonder if it's some sort of market probe by TLG to find out if these kind of things would be popular enough to release marble run sets or even GBC's...

Google cloud works, but we have to click the link as the photos won't show up embedded in your post. Using Flickr or some other service like Brickshelf or Imgur will allow embedding the photos directly into your posts, which helps readability.

Cool, I've got to check these out.

Omg, this is so cool. I hope you find the time and energy to finish it properly. Now I only wish there was an easy way to have bluetooth on my desktop computer...

That tractor is no longer than a typical truck, with trailers generally being pretty low on functions so not that impressive addition. Now if you load that tractor with an excavator (like in your example) or some other machinery that's complex and includes lots of functions in its own right, then you're doing a lot of additional work and that could very well be reflected on the score - but then it's about work involved, not about size. Also it's not that much more in terms of just bricks, anyone who owns something like four mid-large sets and can spare a few dozen euros on additional parts from Bricklink could build pretty large entry, provided they are willing to build in the colours they happen to have. And I bet vast majority of people considering entering have much much larger parts collections. In that sense if the size was really a winning factor, you'd expect that people would've noticed and started to enter with larger and larger builds but that's not the case - most entries are quite sensibly scaled. And why shouldn't the Forklift Transporter be ranked highly? It's a really faithful recreation of the set it's modelled after, and it was ranked highly by both, voters and the jury. I find it hard to believe that size had any relevance in the rankings, and rather it was well executed model which fit the criteria and theme of the contest precisely. The 8880 built by sebulba56 was similar in that the source model happened to be on the larger side but that's irrelevant, as the execution was really good, especially considering the original 8880 and it's body sculpted of many complex angles. Building such a thing is not easy while keeping all the functions and still making an instantly recognizable recreation and the place in top-10 is well deserved. You make again and again the argument that large equals better ranking, but I have yet to see you provide any actual proof that this is the case beyond your subjective opinion. It's not about who makes the bigger thing with more functions - if it was we'd consistently see the largest entries being ranked highly and smallest in the lower end. But that's not what we see, instead there's a nice distribution of small, mid-size and large sets among the top scoring entries of contests, sometimes the top-3 also consists of sets on the smaller end like in TC24 Space Police Contest. So as I see it, the contests are already on as even ground as they can be, with more experienced builders generally getting better results. And that is as it should be.