mattman

Cheers, your defender is stunning by the way too! My.

A bomber would be cool, it was definitely on my shortlist, but it didn't end up using a whole lot from the 75095 set I had as a parts donor. If doing one I'd just build it all from scratch and order what I need. I've seen a couple of decent UCS Scale moc so will have to check those out :-) M.

Howdy All, I've been on a bit of a run of late with the TIE's. I have had the original 75095 for a while, and recently built one of the amazing Interceptor MOC's that have been posted around the place. I happened upon yet another cheapish copy of the set, so figured I have to make a third! The goal was to make something nice and neat, but with efficient use of the parts in the set. I had a play around with designs for TIE Advanced x1 and TIE Bomber, the wings are large and needed quite a lot of parts, but that alone was OK. The cockpits however are very very difficult to design around the stock 75095 ball cockpit and I came to the realisation there's almost no point using 75095 as a base for these designs - it just deviates too much. Also they are hard to design :P All credit to people who've MOC'ed these before! So I did some more digging about for other TIE variants, and stumbled across the TIE/D Droid/Done/Automated Starfighter (depending on which bit of legends you read apparently). Classic ball cockpit, smaller angled wings. The shape of the panels themselves present no real problem, a few extra parts for the grey trim on the edges and a few black plates but <$20 overall in parts. The angle posed a challenge - but I think it came off really well and in the end actually a pretty simple adaptation of the standard fitment of the panels (rotate 90 degrees, offset one pair of connectors by one stud). Of course no longer needing a cockpit "window" I needed to fix that too. A common representation seems to be a red "eye" of similar size, so I've just fixed in a 6x6 dark red inverted radar behind the standard window, using just a small mod to the normal cockpit attachment. Anyway - on to pictures! And with the others! Hope you all enjoy :) M.

Looks like regular stand from 75095. M.

Got bitten by the UCS bug after TFA (like many others I guess) and always keen to save some $$. The posts above re cockpit mods are great, could also be applied to the squint too I imagine. I've seen a couple of cheap 7181 recently but always seem to just miss out, just ordered a 6206 today to keep me happy :p Regarding bricklinking a set in general, I've done any number of larger sets now, it really only makes sense if a) you have a significant portion of it already in your inventory or b) you can make sensible subs to bring the cost down. If you're just buying loose parts, unless you stumble on some random super cheap seller, a used/complete set is often slightly cheaper (and much much easier) than bricklinking all the individual parts. Many guides on 10179 with sensible subs, note a few others in here too (funny I did a colour swapped 10187 had to swap the same yellow technic corner as in the SSD, to black). Have a play with Brickstock as it makes it easy to import inventory from BL, set to average price and see where all the $$ are going. sort by price per part/lot, see what can be changed out. If there's not much to change then just grab a used set somewhere.. M.

I know it's probably far too late for this project at this point (still love the software though!), my only comment for improvement would be if when you get the results page up, if it could add the total weight of the bricks from each store with each store result? IE - store a, 300 parts, $35.27, 254.3gm store b, 256 parts, $21, 404gm Would make estimating postage costs about a million times easier :) Otherwise, love it.

Yeah I know :-) haven't tested yet but I have a bad feeling current hair will be too heavy at full height.

Whoops forgot the album, there is indeed a closer pic of the top, as well as a couple more not posted above. https://www.flickr.com/photos/64693712@N05/sets/72157645490264747/with/14551511938/

I know, it's fairytales not castle... but if you take off the minifigs it stands very happily as a castle moc in it's own right ;) For a while we've had a tower for rapunzel on our display, it was nice, but it wasn't a centrepiece... you can safely say that has changed now! In standard form: Even at this point, (in my opinion at least) its a very nice tower just as is! But you know, that's just not enough sometimes... Starting to make sense? This tower can grow! And being that it gets carted around to displays, it's easy to move as well. Only the top and bottom hold form, the rest packs flat. You can easily get the whole tower in a pretty standard box. This is what it's all about though! At the moment it stands 1.35m / 4.6" tall and that can very easily be added to as well, our only limit right now is the parts we have on hand. Stability is still good even at this point, though you probably don't want to bump the table too hard ;) Hope you all enjoy our latest creation :) mattman & lorax (who really, did most of the work)

Alrighty silly question time. Most of my stuff is for trains and buildings with motors running for effect. NOT the technic vehicle remote control stuff that's been pushed so far. Are there any control faces planned to emulate the lego train IR controller? Just so I can set a speed, stop, start etc without having to hold the control all day at a given speed. For now it'd just be basic control replacing multiple IR boxes, but down the road it may just inspire some fancier MOC's that make full use of it :) M.

No problems with that. Look at 2nd pic again and you'll notice that there's a small platform with wheels under the horses.

Thanks all - I expect this is only going to get better. Will probably be doing the rounds for a while yet. Too much work to junk it after one show :-P M.

No they don't. It's not impossible to do, but they would have to be a fair bit higher off the ground. The reason I went with the small wheels up front was to keep it closer to the ground and more realistic. Maybe something to explore for future versions :-) M.

Show has been open for about an hour and seems to be going down a treat :-D glad you guys are liking it too!

Thanks guys, glad you both like it!

Howdy all :) It's show time for us, and that means a new display. We've participated in shows before as part of other displays, but only this year have we had our own spot. We did a smaller show earlier in the year but decided it needed to be bigger and better ;) Well, here's the display Brisbricks 2013 by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr It's a 3x5 baseplate area, bottom layer has a train loop, with a mining scene at the front. It's also got blacklights and some trans-neon stuff that goes crazy in the lights :) The train is pulling mine carts which also have some trans-neon amongst normal gems/precious minerals. LEGO w/ Blacklights by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Up top is another train loop, which runs through a tunnel at the back of the display. In keeping with the fairytale theme I decided to make it a pumpkin carriage - all runs on 9V track still! Pumpkin carriage by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr On top of the display there's a large castle which the carriage runs in to, plus about 10 other little fairytale scenes. Jack and jill by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Pied piper by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Gingerbread house by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr No idea what happened to the last pic, blue studs are actually dark purple :/ Camera went weeeeiiiird. Display opens to the public tomorrow, we're hoping to get a pretty good reaction, but it's not always easy to tell with this stuff. Hope you all enjoy!

Thanks :-) it's always the "out there" ideas I am chasing!

Howdy all, From my previous posts you can gather that I don't do normal trains at all :) Well, nothing has changed! This one started off as a static peice for a fairytale land in a local show. MOC carriage basically on an undercarriage ripped from the Lone Ranger set. We since decided to make our scene much larger and cooler for the next show... so stuff had to move - including the carriage! The biggest challenge is getting it to blend/hide with the 9V train motor, but I think that worked out ok. Took quite some rearranging of particularly the rear axle and had to be rebuilt from scratch. Horses up front track ok, bit of grease fixed the squeaky wheels :p They do wear a bit not being proper train wheels but nothing problematic. First pic is when it was a static part... sorry for nasty low res pic. Pumpkin Carriage by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Second is how it is today - in running form (though i just realised the plant on top fell off, imagine a broad leaf plant :D) 9v Pumpkin Carriage by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Show is on this weekend... so I guess we will see how the public react as well :D Thanks, Matt

Howdy all, I picked this up a couple of days back (super cheap at $59 in Australia, catalogue stuffup FTW). It really just needed to be motorized and as far as I'm aware, noone else has really done this as close to the original set (though there's a few out there). Basic changes: -Swapped first 2 axles for 9V motor -Reduction to 1 pin at both ends of the boiler to allow pivot. Basic re-arrange and a few part subs to allow range of motion. -Wheels from cars swapped to axle style train wheels -Cars with wings had the back half of the car shrunk to 2-wide, as the standard layout was too wide to fit on track. Some parts were subbed to make it fit, but the basic design hasn't changed otherwise. -Chains for hookups, the stock ones don't allow enough side-to-side movement around corners and will derail the train. Standard couplers need to be fairly high to clear the tracks and simply didn't fit the design. I've used this before with a decent degree of success and it fits the ghoulish theme IMO. -need to get some more of these train wheels as I don't currently have enough to complete the last car (it's just a dupe of the flapping wings one). And yes I know about my toes :D CBF recording it again lol. Thanks for watching :D Will add some proper pics tomorrow. Edit - pics time! Monster Fighters Ghost Train (9V) by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Monster Fighters Ghost Train (9V) by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Monster Fighters Ghost Train (9V) by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Matt

We got this set a couple of weeks back and decided to re-purpose it for our local LUG's MOC night! The theme was carnival rides... so that is what we did :D My wife (tikitikitembo) built the baseboard and water/island, the ship is 99% original to the set (small mods to allow hooking up to the motor stuff) and I did the motorisation and greenery :) Flying Dutchman by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Flying Dutchman by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr Flying Dutchman by Matt_Henry_Aus, on Flickr And last but not least - proof that it is actually a "ride", not a static display :p Would love some feedback! Thanks, Matt

If you're anywhere near brisbane northside, Hypermarket at Aspley is clearing a heap of lego at half price. Not everything is half off yet (but i was told they were still going through scanning stuff to find out) but I just picked up a good haul. Most stuff left in the clearance area ATM is ninjago, but there's 2012 stuff in there too. Make sure you hit up the seasonal/clearance aisle though, not the normal lego spot. Got: MVR @ $60 (3rd for us, oops) 2012 ninjago helicopter @ $25 Batman/catwoman chase @ $12.50 POTC captains cabin @ $12.50 (later discovered that minifigs had been raided which sucks, but we were mostly after the bottles/globe anyway). And one of the ninjago starter sets @ $15 the non ninjago was last of each on the shelf, don't be expecting to find them ;P

Bump for the xmas season, even if i should have done so a week ago :P Train got run around the tree a bit... and trashed by my three year old :/ lol, thank goodness it's just lego and goes back together :P

Yeah, real shame that. With the amount of noise about pricing disparity (to the point they are making semi-official statements about it) and the increasing volume of lego imported from o/s you would think they would try to get it *nearer* to parity with the US, not WORSE! For those not in the know, the AU and USD are pretty much at parity - USD$1 = AUD$1, yet our sets normally cost ~70% more plus hefty shipping charges from S@H for any exclusives we want (shipping STARTS about $35). This is a step completely in the wrong direction, now asking over 100% more just because we don't live in the US... I can, without any doubt, promise I will not be buying any SH theme from any Aus retailers, if i want it i will import it. I still buy some things locally on sale but I'm going to make a special point of this one - it is ridiculous. M.

My big MOC is coming along nicely :) Think 2 baseplates, densely forested with a forestmen treehouse. Most of the landscape/trees is done, just got to work on the structure now mostly. No pics until it's done this time :P

If you have the 9V motors now, go look at the price of the IR receiver ($23) + remote ($13) + battery box ($20) + 8886 cable ($8) before you decide it's going to be cheaper. Corners are about the same for either system, though 9v straights are a bit more. Factor in that you'll have to rebuild your trains to incorporate a battery box and it's just not worth it. You can still in future run PF trains on a 9v track but not the other way around (other than adding all the parts i listed above). I've used the 8886 before and it works just fine, but that was for powering PF stuff from a 9V train motor rather than the other way around :) M.