Blakbird

Update Incremental update to Technicopedia. Adds year and new part summary for 2015 and updates all related category pages. Adds Snow Vehicle category. Error fixes.

I just finished building it. It took some tweaking, but now works OK. I'll make some changes to the PDF to account for my fixes and then post it.

There's really nothing to discuss. Technicopedia lists 8880 as the best supercar and therefore it is definitive.

Yes, that's the one. It just needs to be strong enough to preload the ratchet.

For that price he should have at least bought the stickers.

The black 7L axles are very rare and appear in the strakes for the rear spoiler so it is rather important that they be black. Cutting a longer axle down to size is certainly a viable option. The black bushings could be gray, of course, it just wouldn't look as good. Some of the white flex axle lengths are also rare.

It's pretty easy! Download Brickstore. Open File.

UCS is hard to define. For me it is not just about more parts but also about being incredibly realistic and usable as a display model. In that vein, I think this fits right in as a UCS set. Even from a functional standpoint, a sequential gearbox has never been done before in an official set and is a major new function. I expect that it will be much more reliable than most of the AFOL attempts. I don't think we're ever going to get a set aimed just at us. There are simply not enough of us AFOLs to justify the development and production expense. So it makes total sense to me that it order to make a Technic UCS set viable, they had to aim also at "executives" since it is priced out of range for kids. Based on the Internet response so far, I would say they are succeeding.

I've seen this creation in person at a couple of Cons. It is big all right. The physically largest Technic model I have in my collection is Desert752's Feller Buncher.

I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. Fans, myself included, have been asking for a UCS-style Technic set for years and saying we'd be willing to pay a premium for it. We know the reason it hasn't existed in the past is because the market would probably be very limited due to the high price. Now LEGO is finally giving us what we asked for and everyone is complaining about the price. Of course it is expensive, it is a premium product offering. No one is being forced to buy it. One thing we can be sure of: if it doesn't sell because of the cost then they will never offer another UCS Technic set. When the first UCS Star Destroyer (10030) came out, there were similar complaints. Who would pay so much for a model that you can't even play with? Obviously the answer is a lot of people!

Pretty much every supercar MOC I have ever reproduced has been more than $300 and with fewer parts than this. I'd say it is a pretty good deal based on my experience of cars this size. Keep in mind, LEGO has never made a car this size so there is no basis of official comparison. What's the difference between 1:8 and the usual 1:10? This (the Mustang is 1:8):

The orange isn't bad (in fact I am very happy to have the orange parts), it just doesn't look much like the original. It is a beautiful LEGO car though. I never thought we would get an orange car. Those 11L orange beams I am trying to sell on Bricklink are probably worthless now!

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend BrickCAN in Vancouver, British Columbia. I took 4 Akiyuki modules with me which were expected to run throughout the weekend: about 14 hours altogether. The following are some observations I made in order of reliability: Lift Triggered by a Stuck Ball: This ran flawlessly all weekend. I never had to touch it or worry about it. 6 Heads: This ran very well but over time some of the neck parts would become loose and have to be pushed back together. No big deal. There was also an occasional dropped ball. Fork to Fork: The started out very smoothly but after a few hours the motion became very jerky and sometimes it would even grind to a halt. This was a big surprise since this module has very low power requirements. After much troubleshooting, I finally tracked the problem to the clutch gear. I don't know whether it got hot or the knob wheels caused too much friction, but it was slipping a lot. I replaced it with a normal 24 tooth gear and then it worked fine. This module also occasionally broke off an antenna which resulted in dropped balls until it could be fixed. It was suggested that "handcuffs" could be used to make them more secure but I haven't tried it yet. Cycloidal Drive: This module gave me a lot of problems. It would only run for about 5 minutes and then shut down. Again, I replaced the clutch gears with standard gears. This improved the performance, but it would still only run 10-15 minutes before stalling the motor and stopping. The highly loaded knob wheels were making a lot of noise. I think the sticky turntable is primarily to blame. I would like to switch to the new turntable which would work much better but would also screw up the gear ratios (60 tooth versus 56 tooth). It will require a considerable redesign to incorporate it. With all of that being said, the Akiyuki modules were generally as reliable or more so than the rest of the layout (apart from the cycloidal), but dozens of hours of run time takes a heavy toll on LEGO. And babysitting them takes a heavy toll on my feet and back!

My site used to contain other sections for my rocketry and astronomy hobbies. Those have since gone by the wayside. I don't think the Internet has the bandwidth to cover "everything that is Blakbird". I do have a site for my Pocher Aventador build though! After displaying GBC this weekend, it certainly occurred to me that it would be nice to put everything in one place. It is not really a matter of storage or traffic, but more of time. My Bricksafe account is a better place to peruse if you want to see what I've been up to other than Technicopedia. Some day perhaps I will be able to consolidate stuff.

You can really see the difference between the Porsche Lava Orange and LEGO orange in that video.

The last of the parts to convert to the tall version arrived this weekend. I will build in the next couple of days and then release the instructions. Please note that I made a lot more changes to my tall version than you did when you build it. Most significantly, I added Akiyuki's mid-guides to the vertical rails. I hope they work! Wow, that looks awesome! This module has been on the top of my "must-build" list for a long time but the reverse engineering was daunting. Glad to see someone is having a go at it and succeeding. Other than the white cars I've built lately, I had also been preparing for BrickCAN which I attended last weekend. Now that it is over, I will have some time to get back to this project. There are several other resources in which people have attempted the same goal: to consolidate GBC resources in one place. Most end up being incomplete for one reason or another. I can see that you have put a lot of effort into the design of your site. I hope it is successful! He did it again! When I did instructions for the Basket Shooter, Philo said that making an LDraw file for the backboard was not much work. Well Philo, how do you feel about modeling those planets?! Fantastic work! I am really looking forward to this one. Any idea how many parts it has? As discussed above, I was distracted by a few things. I have also been working on Technicopedia, and in fact am nearly ready to post the 2015 page. After that I should have more time to work this project again. I have not given up on it.

Holy #$@! Eurobricks is going to need someone to review this thing. I'm someone! There are several fascinating bits of timing here: I just finished months of collecting rare parts to convert my Countach to orange. Virtually all of those pieces will now become common. I just finished building Pvdb's Koenigsegg One:1. Based on the photos I am seeing, the 911 sequential gearbox works in a substantially similar fashion. I just wrote about 8448 on Technicopedia last week and discussed the fact that packaging was very unique with multiple boxes and seemed to indicate an attempt by LEGO to make an "ultimate" set. Now they are doing the same thing! I have personally been asking for a "UCS style" Technic set for years now, and in my opinion this is in answer to that request. Thanks LEGO! June can't come soon enough.

You are quite right, it should appear in that category. Not sure what happened. It just so happens that I am updating the categories right now so I will fix that.

Because the pin is not lined up in the hole.

It's nice, but why do you always build so small?

The renders are all done, I don't need any help there. However if you are interested in LDraw just go to LDraw.org and download the all in one installer. There is also a forum here on Eurobricks.

I consider this level of hiding to be totally acceptable. In fact, I positioned that very carefully to show as much as possible. Making these images is a lot of work and requires a lot of thought. I could make sure that nothing ever overlaps, but then I would have to shrink everything down more to make it fit. I consider the primary purpose of these images to show the relative scales of the models and to allow comparison of the styles. For details, you can always go the dedicated page for each model. Thanks for this, I will work on some corrections next week. Although the number of sets per year has been widely variable over the decades, over the last 10 years it has been pretty constant at about 10 sets per year so I don't think there is any escalation. Sets have become generally larger, but this doesn't really make them any harder to write about. 95% of all statistics are crap. Including this one. ;-)

To me "functions" are things that move. Realism is not a function. It is a desirable goal, but not a function. I don't personally think that the LEGO designers are influenced all that much by the AFOL community. Firstly, we are not the target audience for their designs. More importantly, I think they are just as good or better than any MOCer but are constrained by the rules of their job (part count, durability, etc.). I don't think fans had anything to do with the evolution of the "standard" design over time. After all, we can only build with the parts that have been released whereas they can suggest new parts. The one exception is allanp who singlehandedly forced the creation of longer pneumatics. He has more power than any of us and is probably part of the Illuminati.

It has been almost 10 years since I started writing Technicopedia, and it is still far from done. It is reasonable to ask whether I am really making any progress or I am falling further behind as new sets are released. I decided to run some statistics to find out. When I started in 2007, there were 31 years of Technic history to write about and 233 models that I classified as Technic. If you account for the fact that Universal sets have multiple models to write about, then there were really 320 set. This averages out to about 10 sets per year. 31 years : 0 years written : 31 year backlog 320 models : 0 models written : 320 model backlog As of today, I have completed all the historical pages except 2015. The number of models has increased to 403, and I have completed writing about the models up through 1999 which makes 242. 39 years: 38 years written : 1 year backlog 403 models : 242 models written : 161 model backlog So although I still have 161 models to go and there have been significant periods of time between updates, I have actually made a lot of progress toward catching up with the present. Chasing a moving target means I will never be done, but it would be great if this could be a once-a-year activity for new sets only. Of course, the above analysis ignores all of the changes I have made over the years which make the tracking of progress non-linear. For example, I had no LDraw models in the beginning, and I now have files for everything. I also went back and changed the formatting of pages several times, and recently went back and updated all the photographs. I'm trying stop with the "going back" activity now so I can concentrate on "going forward". Of course I'm still going to get distracted by cool MOCs. Curse you Pvdb and your Koeniggsegg!

Always nice to see the official LEGO website trying to be more like Technicopedia!