gheneli

Thanks! Yes, I know that one, it's a huge scale though, I don't think I could fit a large turn table here, for example. Yeah, I'll have to do some brainstorming, at the moment I don't see how this could work. - Some more updates. I'm usually not a big fan of using brick-built stuff on Technic models, but in this case I kinda gave up on trying to make the details from the end of the wing using Technic panels. I think this is super on point using bricks. I even managed to recreate the CHAFF/flare dispensers. Now I can only hope it's a strong enough connection and it's not gonna fall off when you accidentally touch it, even though I've seen people mention this even for the Sadair's Spear rear wing, which also has some brick-built details on each end. The next thing I'm currently trying to solve is the crazy angled tail section, specifically the top cover. Initially, I tried placing the end panels (front and back) straight and just the middle section at an angle, but then I get these ugly triangular gaps, which I absolutely hate. So the solution is to angle the whole top section, front to back. Then I'll get an ugly triangular gap in the middle, between the two panel sections, BUUUT I can use panels to fill that, and the panel angle seems to be a perfect fit. Also, I can have the small dorsal wing (that's some sort of an antenna, as far as I understand - using the small helicopter blade for it) at the correct position, while also helping me fill in the final end section of that triangular gap in the middle. I also love the solution I found for the angle of those gray exhausts. Pretty strong too. Moving on to the interesting part, the autocannon. This uses a system of links that redirect movement from the joystick on the left side to the autocannon on the right. The left/right movement is pretty straight forward, but the up/down movement needed a huge gear increase so that you wouldn't have to turn the joystick a crazy amount to have the full range of motion. For that, I used the wheel hub 46490c01 that has integrated down-gearing. It works fantastic, and it feels very smooth. it is a bit sensitive, but you can easily get used to the control. The only problem I have here is that, because of all the down-gearing, the autocannon moves very easily, and when you leave it on neutral (horizontal position) it tends to drop by itself, because of the weight. I could make the joystick have more resistance by using a friction pin, but that would be terrible for controlling the stick. I'm thinking I could use something that acts like a spring and holds/brings back the autocannon to neutral when you're not using the stick. That's it for today, I'll have to spend a bit more time solving these. The next thing is probably gonna be mounting the battery box and fine tuning the front landing gear. Thanks for reading.

Now that's interesting, but it don't quite like the swashplate not being symmetrical, that will mess up the neutral position for sure. I think I'm gonna try doing the collective control, which changes the feathering angle of all the blades, this one seems doable. I just need something that raises and lowers on the rotor column, it doesn't have to turn in all directions. I don't think you included the actual link to the thread. You're very welcome! Thanks for checking out my thread! Ah, yes, the K-Max is a very interesting helicopter, but yeah, seems pretty narrow to fit anything inside. I'm also having issues with properly fitting the battery box in here, I'll have to make some compromises. It is what it is. Yes, I also hate the lag a link connector has, and in some cases it's quite significant. I know Lipko's plane, yes, but it's a slightly larger scale. Mine is around 1:20ish. But I'll give it another look anyway. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! Honestly, I didn't even dare think I could do working flight controls. I'm not sure how I could pull off a working swashplate, since the last helicopter LEGO released had a 5 blade rotor, which would not work here. Thank you! I haven't given the rotor too much thought, I'm usually running away from crazy mechanisms like these, so at the moment, this is pretty much the same rotor design from 42052. I decided I wanna try solving the landing gear mainly because I think it looks really cool. But cyclic controls would add a crazy amount of complexity, and I'm not sure it's worth it, visually. Also, I don't really see how I could create a working swashplate with a 3 blade rotor. You've seen the latest LEGO helicopter, it has a custom designed swashplate for a 5 blade, because it was impossible without that. It would work on a 2 blade or 4 blade, LEGO has done a 4 blade before without any new parts, but a 3 blade? I really don't see how. But I can at least promise I'll give it more thought.

I've finally decided to properly share my Kamov Ka-50 helicopter MOC. At this point, I have a prototype ready, all the proportion work is done, I still have a few external details to figure out (and some redesigning), and also a few internal mechanisms to properly fit in. This is a very dear project of mine. Also the most ambitious one, so far. Challenging both in terms of functions/mechanisms but also in terms of looks. This is probably my favorite attack helicopter, and I've been wanting to give it a proper translation into LEGO for at least 10 years. I've started researching stuff about it, but the first sketches I've done for this project happened back in 2020. Back then, Studio didn't have the option to import blueprints, so I was using colored beams for measuring (you'll see those in some of the renders) I've decided to try my best to complete this project mainly because I think it could be one of the coolest MOCs the community has to offer, I love designing LEGO Technic stuff, and I've also loved this helicopter ever since I was a kid. It will have 2 motorized functions (co-axial rotor, and landing gear) and 2 manual functions (machine gun controlled by a single joystick on the left side, and the tail rudder controlled by the cockpit stick - I still have to find the room for linking those two) Initially, I wanted to use 2 x Powered Up L motors, positioned exactly where the real engines are, but that was gonna be a really tight fit. The idea was having one motor for each function, so the landing gear would easily be controlled up/down just from the battery box switch, without any reverse switch gearing. But right now I'm thinking I should just use one single motor, permanently linked to the rotor (so switching on the battery would turn on the rotor) and then a different switch for lowering / raising the landing gear. I'm still debating this idea. I'm open to any suggestions you might have. I'm not very experienced with motors and how much weight they can pull, so I imagine I'll need quite a bit of testing here. I also think a lot of gearing down is needed. Also, 2 clutches, one for the rotor and one for the landing gear, so if for some reason, the landing gear is stopped in mid transition, the rotor is still going. But if the rotor is stopped, the whole thing stops. - But today I wanna show you the most interesting motorized function, which is the main landing gear (just the rear wheels for today). I'll be honest, designing this one took at least a year of testing and I imagine it feels as good as solving something like the ghost mode from the Sadair's Spear. It's a very cool and visually impactful function. Tested over and over again, 0 failures, there's proper clearance everywhere, there's a satisfying flow and alignment to how the panels are arranged, and it feels amazing seeing this thing work in real life. I didn't have access to any schematics properly showing the internals of the landing gear, so I had to guess where the hinge is positioned and what the angle is, to have the wheels folded at an angle like that, while having them sit straight when fully lowered. The landing gear mechanism is pretty straight forward, just a worm gear activating a liftarm linked to the wheel arm support. The arm itself has an angled hinge on top, designed using basic triangle geometry. The hinge then connects to an angled frame, using the same geometry (so, basically, the same angle). This basically negates the angle when the arm is fully lowered, and sits straight, so the wheels are staying straight as well. When retracted, though, the wheels sit at an angle, just like the real thing. The most challenging part was linking / syncing the bay doors to the wheels. Initially, I thought of a system that was pushing the door out using an axle, then the door closed using a rubber band that pulled it back in position once the axle retracted. It used a barrel that looked like this (below) And below you can see it mounted (in retracted/closed position) The beauty of it is that the rotation of that barrel opens the doors (at a 180 degree turn) and then closes them (at an almost full 360) but it also works in reverse, when you're raising the landing gear, performing the exact same motion for the door. It wasn't quite perfect, because the axle would rotate a bit at the beginning of the motion, so instead of pushing the door directly with a linear motion, it would somehow rotate towards it from the side. Sometimes it would fail to open it in time and the wheel would come down and hit the door. But then I realized I could use a 6L link instead of an axle. The problem was I needed a perpendicular link. Luckily, LEGO decided to release that exact link, with the 42182 NASA Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle, which was a perfect fit and solved my problem. And I didn't need a rubber band for closing the door anymore. The two mechanisms, each using a worm gear, are then linked together and synced using gears. And here's an old photo from 2019, pretty much how it all started, even before I discovered Studio. You can also see an early attempt at the machine gun. On my next post, I will show the machine gun mechanism in detail, which is the second most interesting function. Stay tuned! I hope you're enjoying the presentation so far!

I was actually curious if someone else is noticing this weird striping on the black parts, it's like they have multiple lines on the surface, one black, one slightly lighter (like a dark brown), another black and so on. You can also see it in these pictures, at the front of the car, and you can clearly see it if you look at a black connector in good light. What is that supposed to be? Because it's hard to call that high quality...

Damn, and here I was, thinking RacingBrick did detailed reviews.

Fair enough. Same here. I was really surprised after watching RacingBrick's review showing how that half-bush is being pushed out when you press on the suspension. I mean, I've never seen this in LEGO before, they always take structure seriously. And as far as I understand it's because of the new arms that are made from flexible material and when pushing the suspension, they flex in a weird way. Other than that, I'm not a gearbox guy, I can hardly understand what is going on in this gearbox setup, but it seems some people are saying they created a lot of new parts to get a lazy fix for a complicated issue. Although, when it comes to gears and transmissions, we can never get enough new parts. But I am a designer so I can see how they boast about "the suspension system being very hard to solve" while having designed LITERALLY the whole thing with NEW parts. So, you're saying it was hard to design, but then you have 2 new shocks and 1 new arm that basically complete the whole system. Where's the difficulty exactly? Or was it TOO difficult so they decided they have to go with 3 new parts. Don't get me wrong, I was waiting for a 6L shock, that's absolutely welcome, but it seems they are getting very lazy, and instead of solving stuff, which is the core of LEGO, they're starting to rely on super specialized parts, like the new arm that can only be used for very specific suspension setup. The ghost mode is absolutely hats off from me, especially being made without any new parts. At least so far. We'll have to wait for RacingBrick's part 2, to see how much backlash it has, or how many times the mechanism fails.

Where I come from, we have a word for when companies intentionally avoid sharing certain information to the public to make their product look more impressive than it actually is (like not mentioning there's a real electric motor driving it that helped achieve the "amazing" "speed record") and that word is bullsh!t. When I see people press on the Koenigsegg's suspension, it seems quite soft actually, so I imagine most of the strength comes from the long shock above, not the side ones. I'm still hoping it's a normal shock with the usual strength, because I could really use it on one of my projects to create a cantilever suspension. It was an absolute nightmare to try using a 6,5L for a cantilever with horizontal shock, and while I managed to fit the 9L, the hinge that made the transition between pushrod and shock can't hold that much strength from a 9L shock. So yeah, it would be perfect for pushrods and such type of suspension systems. And the new steering arms can only be used for a pushrod system like on the McLaren F1, but not much else.

I'm wondering if the new 6L shock is as strong as the old 9L one, even thought I kinda doubt it. I imagine it's as strong as the old 6,5L hard shock? The 9L is impossible to use in smaller scales, even if you make it fit, because it packs quite a lot of strength and you need a crazy sturdy structure for it. My question is can the new 6L actually replace the old 6,5L ones? (Because I'm sure not even Lego knows why it has that half module in it, it's very annoying when working on complicated suspension setups - we can see it in the F1 sets, where you have to compress the shock to make it fit the assembly because of that extra half module)

Sure, the Chiron had a steel baseplate, but the Koenigsegg has a full roll cage that you can see in the video... Chiron had LEGO steering wheel and seat. Do you see any steel structure holding these LEGO sections here? And even so, I don't care how you build it, just don't come up with some BS speed record or boast about how it has Ghost mode when it has real electronics that have nothing to do with LEGO.

I will absolutely never understand how can someone be hyped by this. "Oh look guys, it has steering and you can drive it". Man, it's a freaking steel car frame with everything you need to drive it, real steering wheel and seat, how is this even remotely impressive? What kind of brain power do you need to say "oh, it can drive" when this thing is a real car steel frame? Then they boast that the Ghost mode syncs with the real car... I mean, it's REAL ELECTRONICS, it would be very hard not to make it sync if you can program all the mechanisms (which ARE NOT LEGO) Then it's driven by a real non-LEGO electric motor and they boast it broke a speed record, are you for real? Makes me sick when seeing this, it's like the most dumbed down thing you can cheer at. At least call it for what it is, a marketing stunt, but stop trying to tell everyone how cool it is because it's a steel frame car with some Technic parts added on the steel. 90% of this project was designing the steel frame to mount the Technic parts on top, and it has nothing to do with LEGO building, let alone calling it a LEGO CAR. Remember when they used ACTUAL LEGO motors, as far as I remember it was 1000 of them, to make the life-size Chiron drive? Yeah, nowadays let's use a real car steel frame with everything it needs to drive and coat it with LEGO parts and BEHOLD, A LEGO CAR!

Ooooh, look, those are actually smaller suspensions, the old ones were 9L, the gold ones used here are maybe a 6L.

Haha, my local official LEGO store posted the video presentation on IG and, indeed, it shows how you open the engine cover and immediately the hood and doors pop open as well, just like some people were saying here. So there you go, interesting functions on a 1:8 set, I hope everyone is happy. Link to video -> https://www.instagram.com/p/DZumaRjiRGw/

I mean, if we're talking about a display model like the P1, compared to a bike, what else does it have? Steering, suspension, a gearbox, this is basic and both have them, then the opening doors (I guess... which a bike doesn't have) and the raising spoiler, which is nice, sure, but nothing crazy complex. So, I'd say both of these are meant to do well on display and most points go to esthetics. The P1 gearbox is a lot more complex that anything you'd be able to put on a bike, true, but for me, it feels pointless, especially when you have no idea what gear you're in, not to mention it jams sometimes and fails to shift, and on top of all that it takes a lot of space and limits the details you can add to the engine. And, damn, that's a beautiful looking engine on a P1. I'm especially referring to that godawful way of representing the gold pipes using those sloped bricks, damn I was super disappointed when I saw that. The big 2x2 round elbow pieces would've been fantastic for those pipes, but I guess there was no room because of all the crazy gearbox taking up all the space. I understand some people like to build crazy mechanisms that don't do much in the end, but if you're building a display piece and you sacrifice important details from the engine just to put on a gearbox nobody is gonna use more than once, it just feels weird to me. At least on my chopper bike you can see the 2 different chains move at different speeds, it's a joy to go shift gears and see how the chain changes move speeds. I think that's what we're missing nowadays, be able to see the mechanisms in action, see the pistons moving, not cover them like they do in some sets, the G Wagon, for example. As I was saying above, I don't think you expect a high number of complex functions from a set like the P1 (except for the crazy gearbox - even though it COULD'VE HAD adjustable suspension, which would've been really cool to see when going into race mode the spoiler raising and ride height lowering), or Ford GT / GT40? Or even the Rexy set, it has the integrated jacks, but that's about it, not even a simple gearbox. So then why is a motorcycle viewed as less interesting or having less expectations from it? And then, if you're comparing a utility vehicle, like a crane (that has a crazy amount of movable parts and functions) to a display set like a racecar, I don't think that's a fair comparison, these should be into different categories. Yeah, that's a corporation for you, always playing it safe because they have to go for profit first. Seeing they're releasing yet another Technic F1 set is super disappointing to me. Also, that orange recolor for the tuxedo cat, how lazy can you get? That's why I think we need more good MOC designers, to compensate for what TLG is afraid of doing. Yeah, I realized I'd never be happy if I didn't share my designs and just built them for myself. Sharing seems to be a very important part. And yes, I'm probably gonna do the same, I'd absolutely hate designing something just because it's a trend now. Actually, I'd probably even go the opposite way of what the trend is. We're missing a lot of vehicle types, and I'd love to fill that gap, like a backhoe for instance, I haven't seen one from Lego in ages, except for that 10$ mini set, which I can't really count in. Happy to hear! I lowered the price as well, since I don't think I'm gonna become a millionaire yet from selling these, haha, but I don't want to give them away completely free either, since I have a belief that people don't usually appreciate free things and take them for granted. If you build it, I hope you enjoy the process and hope you can share your thoughts here, what you liked / didn't like about it. I noticed that, too. I rarely get any comments related to the building technique or a certain part usage outside of EB, only the usual "great job!" types. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the interactions happening here.

Yes, I know it was a bold decision to take this risk, but it was based on the stuff I saw around, being built by the community. And I saw a huge room for improvement. Even some official sets lack the proper design quality, like the Technic Bugatti Bolide or the Toyota Supra, two of the worst sets in existence, in my opinion. I've actually built the Bolide and the building process is also pretty bad, especially when you want to take it apart. And yes, I know that AMG GTR MOC is a very popular build, I believe even stolen and sold on Chinese websites. But you can't possibly say that design is the best Lego can offer. No offense to the designer, but that's average at best. Even the CaDA GT3 is too busy for my tastes, too many parts cluttered in the front end design, for example. If I can give credit to TLG for something, it's for designing (most of the times) very clean shapes and good flow between parts / panels. You rarely see clutter in TLG designs. The goal is to recreate the required shapes with as few parts as possible, not stack 100 parts just to make sure your shape is 100% accurate. So, if you design stuff for a living, you can definitely recognize that TLG actually know what they're doing. Compared to a lot of the MOCs out there, which are a clutter fest. I realized that for me, it's pretty pointless if I don't show my designs. And not only show, but get people to experience building them. I think the building process represents more than half of the whole experience and it's a pity if people don't get the opportunity to build it and just see it in a picture. Thank you! I'd be super happy if people would understand the building techniques used, and why everything works, for example the Harley chopper frame, because everything lines up perfectly, it's not forcing any parts together like I've seen in so many MOCs. What I find funny is that even reviewers like RacingBrick on YT are now EXPECTING MOC-ers to FIX the problems that the sets might arrive with. Wouldn't it be better for TLG to do their job properly? But I think the most annoying issue for me is the plastic quality, which has dropped significantly. I'm literally scared of manipulating some of the parts because I fear they could break at any moment, especially the half-beams with axle holes on each end. Those constantly break and become unusable, yet I haven't seen TLG come up with any sort of redesign / reinforcement solution. I've even had sets built and left on the shelf for display, and a few months later when I tried to disassemble them, the parts literally came out broken, so they actually break while being connected on the model, which is absolutely insane to me.