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/

You can see it in the pictures, it's clearly the same straight steering wheel and packed with the shifting mechanisms underneath it, thus no room for legs. I saw other people design this type of shifter with an angle as well, but I can't say how reliable it is. But it IS possible. And I'm really not convinced they need to create such a tall thing that takes up all the space underneath the wheel. Or at least leave the chunky mechanism, but angle the steering wheel a bit, as it's not connected to the mechanism. Again, pretty lazy. New parts for suspensions and arms, printed headlights. You got all the clues right here. This is what happens when you can't solve a problem, add prints or create a new part. Meanwhile, MOC designers have to go crazy to solve things with the available parts, and with the available colors.

I was thinking the same, why would they put a 9 gear indicator on the steering wheel if they don't have 9 gears? They must've made it work somehow. And I assume the gear indicator will also be used on the car to show what gear you're in. The P1 was super frustrating, never knowing which gear you're in, never knowing if you've reached the end of the sequence or the whole thing just jammed. LEGO is a few years late with this feature, I've seen it on so many other brands, but I doubt LEGO actually cares.

If you mean the wheel arches, those are definitely recolored from the P1. And yes, I think those are new wishbone arms, I don't see any seam to indicate they're made of 2 pieces. Quite curious, because this is a very specialized part, you can't really use that with anything else other than this type of pushrod system. I'm guessing they needed a more stronger part there and adding to the old P1 arm wouldn't cut it. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense. I mean they released the Daytona with that crazy articulation that looked like it was made from scrap parts and now they're designing new parts for each new set? I completely agree they should choose vehicles that have interesting functions, but they ignored the P1 adjustable ride height, so what's the point if they don't also implement the cool systems? Regarding the HOGs, you can see they don't add it at this scale, and the removable body parts are always accurate. They either open up, like the Daytona, or they are removed completely, like the P1 engine cover. What I don't understand is people asking for weird functions like opening the door with a motorized mechanism like other brands are doing... which is totally inaccurate. Doors on real cars are rarely motorized, yet I keep seeing people ask for this in Lego. Just go get the new Unimog if that's what you're looking for, it's packed with functions. I get the impression people still don't understand that this 1:8 category is mostly about the visual impact. Other than a gearbox (which no casual builder will ever understand how it works), there's nothing interesting here. Maybe the suspension and door mechanism in this case, maybe a butterfly door + spoiler mechanism like on the P1, but mostly it's the looks. They should definitely market this as in the past, when they had the Racers category. Then, people won't expect weird functions from a display-focused car. Don't get me wrong, I also love functions, but I understand this category cannot possibly have more functions than a utility vehicle like the Unimog or Arocs.

I really don't get this idea of "the real car doesn't have this feature, but I want it for this Technic car anyway" I mean, they missed out on the amazing P1 feature, where if you select race mode, it lowers the ride height and extends the spoiler, imagine if we had that activated by one single mechanism. But no, they only made a mechanism for the spoiler. Why would anyone hope they would ever add extra features that you can't find on the real car is beyond me.

So the exhaust is indeed brick-built, custom part was too good to be true. Same with the taillights. The new suspension looks cool, but I can't see where else you would use that thing lol. I've been building stuff for quite a few years now, and I never once had the problem of the suspension being too short, it's always too damn long. The hood appears to open with the bottom part of the the windscreen, huh, interesting. This answers my question. Also, it appears the spear on the side separates when the door opens, so that's probably why they decided to use a bionicle tooth. And those seats are way too basic, no bolsters.

I haven't yet had the courage to buy other non-Lego Technic sets, but I've recently tried the 300 SL from Mattel and, while the end result looks very nice with all the custom parts, the building experience felt pretty poor and the part quality is nowhere near Lego. Some say it's 90% Lego quality, that's BS. Some parts you simply cannot take apart anymore once connected, even with the brick separator. You will damage the parts before being able to separate two 2x2 plates connected on top of each other, for example. Also, at some point in the build, the upper section module of the front mudguard simply didn't want to match the rest of the build, as if it had some stud tolerance problems. Spent like 5 minutes trying to understand why the studs won't align. I've never had that with Lego. Also, we criticize Lego for some of the part color inconsistencies, but you should see the metallic parts from Mattel, some terrible mismatching there. And pricing is like 30$ less than similar Lego sets. Sure, you also get metal parts, but price is still too high for the experience and quality. Sticking to Lego.

I'm shocked that they made a custom part for the exhaust, should've been done with the P1. Taillights seem to me they're brick-built with 1x2 red curved slopes, and that's lame. The "spear" on the side is as I thought, a bionicle tooth, and that's a NO-NO. It needed a minifig spear or something. Or at least put that tooth with the flat end on the outside, since that spear is flat on the real car. Very weird choice there. I'm curious how you open the bonnet without lifting the bottom frame of the windshield, it feels like the 11x3 curved panels on the hood go underneath the curved soft axle frame. If it gets misaligned / raised when raising the hood, that's gonna be the lamest thing ever in Technic. Also, the door line has a weird choice I can't understand, you have a 11x3 straight flat panel and then you match it with a 3x2 curved panel in the front part of the door... why?! The P1 had a much stronger impact on me, this one so far is a "meh", but maybe it's also because I'm not a big fan of this car, while the P1 is a legendary car. Those printed headlights are the least of the problems I see here.

Yeah, I noticed that one too, even from that blurry leaked photo. It seems it perfectly matches the curvature of that elbow tube piece (or is it two of them connected?) but I'm not happy with the transition to the 11x3 curved panel on the side. Still, considering the roof can be removed like the Daytona, they did a much better job designing it. The roof from the Daytona was too blocky compared to how much it curves on the real car. Here, it seems decent, they even gave it a slight angle. Other than the curved 5x5 corner panel, I don't see any other new parts or panels. Everything is recolored from the P1.

It is actually funny seeing people debating over OBVIOUS AI photos. I'm into concept art and 90% of the times it's hilarious how easy it is to spot AI artifacts, lines that don't match, deformed shapes and all that. You can see artifacts here all over the place, except for that one leaked image that's been cleaned up by the AI and it managed to keep all the shapes and parts intact because it already had the real image to copy. But when you ask it to give you other angles, you can immediately see it fail. Same here! I don't understand why they would postpone a Technic because another category is busy. I don't think football fans will be very interested in Technic cars and vice versa. I am all about Technic, and I can honestly say I cringed when I saw that Nike shoe and all the other football sets…

These are not new pictures, they're speculative images generated with AI, so the rear definitely won't look like that. I wouldn't expect many new custom parts designed for this set. I'm still expecting printed taillights at this point. I'm sure the exhaust will be an ugly brick-built one, like the P1 had. I'm curious about the suspension, since it uses slightly more complex pushrods.

I was also wondering what's going on, I think it's the first time we're less than a month away from release (it is July, isn't it?) and we don't have official pictures. Maybe this time they know they've messed up. Otherwise, why would you hold the release so much? Let people know it's a good set and let it build real excitement, like the P1 did, even with those out of proportion headlights. So maybe it isn't that good. The printed headlights "feature" is hands down the laziest thing I've ever seen in a 1:8 Lego Technic set. Congrats on that! It seems that nowadays we wanna break records for worst things ever, rather than for best achievements.

I started this idea a while back and I've decided this one is gonna be mainly aimed at sitting on my shelf and not necessarily building something that's appealing to the majority of Lego fans. I've always loved the cars/vehicles where you can take out a lot of the panels to see the inner workings, all the mechanisms, pipes and wiring and such. So, for this build, I'm only gonna have the whole chassis with the suspension (which is gonna be challenging, at least the rear one) and the engine, displayed without the final panel covers (removed front nozzle and engine cover) and without the wheels. I chose not to add any wheels mainly because I absolutely love how it looks displayed like that, making the details of the calipers and even brake cables stand out even more (and I can also add a more accurate caliper design, because I'm not worried about the wheel not being able to fit). My usual design process is pretty simple. I'll start in Studio trying to create a general mockup, see what problems could occur and how difficult they could be to solve, then order parts I might be missing and start test-building it in real life. Most of the times my Studio calculations are correct, but there were times when I was totally wrong. One of that type of situation was when I thought I could do a cantilever pushrod suspension with the big shock absorber (from the 1:5 bikes) on a 1:10 scale car. That shock absorber is way harder than I thought, and requires a crazy strong structure. In some of the ideas I had here, you can see me trying to add that suspension for the rear, but now that I know what that takes, I'm probably gonna stick to the normal hard shock, especially since the suspension is not gonna need to hold any weight, since the car will be mounted on a stand (because it won't have wheels) I love finding ways to add all sorts of interesting details, like pipes and connections. Those 3 barrels in the front (which I'm guessing they're containers for the brake and clutch fluids) were initially designed using 1x1 round tiles, but they seemed too small, so instead I tried a minifig head + a saucer on top and I think it looks really good now. I'm also happy with the radiator and with that pipe connecting to the radiator, even though that bionicle tooth is pretty rare in dark orange, but worth it. Also 2 more air intakes on each side of the radiator, which I have no idea what they're for (extra cooling for something) At this stage, I haven't physically built anything yet, so I'm still at the mockup stage, but I consider the front half solved. As in, I don't see any issues I might have when I start cleaning up the design and considering the final structure for the frame. You will, however, see a lot of messy connections and part collisions in these renders, because this is still in the early stages, and it's not cleaned up yet. The most interesting idea so far is the design of the side panels, that needed to have a certain roundness (a bit oval, I'd say), but stacking 2 curved panels on top of each other wasn't enough, so I had to come up with something that gave me a higher, relatively continuous curvature. I say relatively continuous because this is Lego and you can't always have multiple panels creating perfect surfaces with no gaps. I still have to find a geometric solution to reinforce the two side panels with a top connection between them. Shouldn't be that hard, now that I've learned so much from designing the frame of my Harley Chopper MOC. The front suspension was pretty straight forward. Added the extra oblique arm using the Pythagoras triangle. It won't be this simple for the rear suspension, unfortunately. I'm gonna also try adding the anti-roll bar (at least just visually, since I don't think it would be functional, because I don't want to stress and twist an axle to recreate it just like in real life - or maybe add a bar as resistance instead of an axle, since a bar has a strong grip but doesn't have a fixed connection like the axle has - we'll see) The seat and steering are pretty straight forward. The steering wheel will have an angled frame for support, and will use a universal joint to connect to the rack. The only thing I find slightly problematic here is reinforcing the structural frame past the seat area, as there seems to be little space due to the unusual position of the exterior side panels + side panels of the seat assembly. The engine, I believe, will be the most impressive part of the whole build. I really wanna get as much detail as possible. Below you can even see me trying to hook up ignition cables using strings. I will also try to find a good structure for those exhaust pipes. A bit challenging to get the transition from 3 pipes to a single, final one. I was thinking the pipes would look better if they were thicker than 1x1, but that means I'll have to stack a ton of parts to create such long pipes. Part number 35186 comes to mind, but I'm not sure it's even possible to stack that many of them. I'm thinking 1x1 will have to do. The biggest challenge remains the rear suspension, mainly the long arms that attach all the way near the cockpit area. I really wanna use those 16L links for that, but I want the geometry to work, so that no parts will be under any stress when compressing the suspension. Hopefully I'll have time to regularly work on this, and post constant updates. Hope you enjoy!