Jeroen Ottens

This looks really good. It was the model that brought me back from the dark ages, so I have fond memories about it. What is the part count compared to the original?

Quite impressive that such a big plane can stand on it's own landinggear

Very nice for a first MOC. For me the highlight is the front grille area. It really has the roundness that the real car has in my opinion. The tilted arch is creative, but distracting. I am also not so sure what the small panels behind the doors are doing there.

Interesting build that I followed since the first post. Looking good so far. Have you considered swapping the 5x7 panel in front of the rearwheel the other way round so that the angled side is at the front?

That is a very capable walker . Stable, steerable and good over rough terrain, I had expected a controller, but it is pure mechanics

Much better indeed. For the shoulder you can maybe use system tiles? Or vertically oriented stacked beams at half a stud offset.

To jump straight in: First I would add the fenders. They are a big part of the look. Put the two headlights closer together Get rid of the vertical grille, but use horizontal beams instead. The grille can be made with either fence pieces (although that is difficult due to the one brick height) or use black beams (possibly with a sticker) The characteristic 'shoulder' in the bodywork should be there over the whole length of the car. It looks like the bonnet is slightly tapered, the long 3x11 panels that you already use can be used to show that taper. The bonnet also has a bit of curvature when looked from the front. I would ignore that (like you did now as well). That is nearly impossible to recreate. I hope this helps.

That is a good looking plane knowing what you crammed inside that fuselage . It is also impressive that it can stand on it's own landinggear, that is not trivial with planes this size...

They just released a free programmable app. The PoweredUp app now has the MindStorms like programming interface

Actually LEGO does have a concept of purism. It is called ‘the system’. Any new part that is added has to be vetted and approved by the LEGO parts system committee. I had a big discussion at the time about adding a 45 degree brace to a new brick (two 1x4 technic bricks that are perpendicular to each other). It was a deviation of the squareness that defined most of the bricks up until that moment. The funny thing was that in the end the part was approved, but I didn’t need it on my model. Later I found it was used in other models made by other designers. Which shows that in the end this part actually was indeed generic enough I think. There is certain logic to the parts in the way they are designed (like thin liftarms with axleholes will have the axleholes at the endpoints). That logic only very slowly changes, it is just applied to new parts every year.

You have a very high standard! I have been thinking about a similar setup for the steeringmodes, but I thought the long beam would not be stiff enough to give proper steeringangles for all axles... Did you do something special to reinforce it? For the rest it is a masterpiece

Very nice refreshing model. I didn't know that such advanced animations were possible in LDCad. Was it hard to make these?

Hi, I'd like to present to you an older model that I designed for a customer some time ago. It is a 1:10 replica of the BMW X3. It is the first model that I designed that uses SBricks to control the model (two of them). It has four different drive modes: manual (so you push and steer the model by hand) rear wheel drive rear wheel drive with driven center differential (effectively giving a power distribution of 75-25 between rear and front axle) four wheel drive It also has eight LEDs for the lights in the front and the rear. The outer ones double as indicator lights as well. The bodywork was one of the most challenging I've ever done. Because these SUV's are all very boxy and similar it really comes down to the details to get it right. In this side view you can see the small angle running from the front to the back. Also the roofline is tapering down at the end. I still wanted the model to be so sturdy that you can lift it from the roof. So every angle that see is fixed in place. To make the challenge even bigger my customer insisted on having a DBG livery, reducing the amount of available parts. One of the areas that notable suffered from this is the area below the rear lights. I've tried many solutions, but this was the least cluttered I could come up with. The interior is fully detailed, with adjustable seats in the front and a bench that can fold down in the back. JaapTechnic even made custom stickers for this model. It has independent suspension on all wheels and a working steering wheel and HoG. All doors can be opened, the hood and trunk as well and even the sunroof can slide 'open' (which is a bit of a strange term when the whole sunroof consists of nothing but a few axles shaping the outer contour). Comments, questions, constructive criticism, etc are all welcomed as usual

I like it a lot! The safeshift system is very ingeneous. And I like the fact that you made sure that the linkage from the stickshift to the gearbox are all form-locked. My only gripe (but that is easily remedied and purely my own internal rules) would be that you use these 1x1 plate with clip on top to shift the driving rings. That feels a little flimsy and is rotation sensitive. Maybe a pin-with-stud and a lipstick or microphone works as well?

Wow, a very impressive model! It looks stunning, but it also feels sturdy/stiff at the same time. How long did you work on this?

I'd first try to work with the DBG panels available. Can you use 3x11 curved panels at an angle with #21/#22 panels below it to fill the gap? And of course 3x7 panels are available in DBG.

What is that blue element below the blue bionicle tooth in the front? It looks like in blue,.

I use a couple of tricks: 1) I minimize the number of pivot-points in the mechanism. So I try to make the path from the controls to the controlsurfaces as straight as possible 2) I use ball-joint links when possible. I have the idea these have less slack 3) For large distances I try to use moving beams instead of rotating axles. The rotational stiffness of axles is quite poor and gives a lot of elastic position loss 4) I start with larger exitations and minimize the excitation at the control surface. If you start with a +/-1 stud movement and you need only +/-0.5 stud at the controlsurface you have some room to deal with the slack 5) I usually add a separate HoG somewhere in the middle of the system. This way you can use this to control both the joystick (that typically has only a limited range of movement) and the controlsurface. Effectively this reduces the slack by a factor 2 when using the HoG for operating the controlsurfaces compared to using the joystick for it

Thanks all. Some answers to the questions: I am not sure about photos TBH. I've tried to photograph this a couple of times, but it is really hard to get a proper photo of such a large model. I do feel that I need to reach a certain quality of photography before I want to post it. Videos are even a bigger thing for me. It takes me about one hour of editing per minute of video. At least to reach that minimum level of quality that I set for myself. I have so many projects I'd rather work on, that I push this photo/video work away. If anyone is interested in making photos/videos of models I make you can PM me and we can see if we can work something out. @captainmib: Yes this model has a retractable landinggear. @steph77: The swashplate has a +/-1 stud tilt capacity, which I considered enough for the tilt of the rotors. Can you reach that? If not, can you send me a photo of your setup? MOD-ing the design to have a 4-blade rotor in the back is what LEGO is about

Now here is a challenge . I see you use a waveselector in the function gearbox. You can put four driving rings around that. With the servo ability of the Control+ (and I guess also the RI-motors) and a small lever with an endstop you can select eight different functions in sets of two. So you'll need in total three motors to drive eight functions. I used this kind of setup in my WIP Spaceshuttle and to be published Backhoe. It works like a charm and is super compact. I do use a lot of 20T clutch gears in this setup for picking up the different functions from the gearbox. If you want I can put some pictures on Flickr. For the rotation of the arm I think I would try to drive the turntables with wormgears instead of a 12T gear at a 90 degree angle. That complicates the whole connectionjoint but the forces in the drivetrain will be smaller and that hopefully will result in smoother performance.

Wooow, that is some huge machinery! It looks stunning, but at the same time so functional. Great build

Thanks. Yes it is possible to build this without the servo-motors. You can then also leave out two IR receivers. If you also give up on the led-lighting you can leave out the extension cable as well. Enjoy the build! And get some serious shelf space Here is picture of the tail rotor. Again @steph77's Augusta Westland 169 model from some time back gave the idea of using the wheel hub. @steph77: Here is a view of the inside: And thanks for all the positive replies

Thanks. That gap has been bothering me as well, but I couldn't find a satisfactory solution for it so I decided to keep it. IRL it is less bothersome than on a render though. Indeed, the blades swoop down about 8 cm. When rotating they come up a little bit though. Yes I have it standing in my LEGO room. I've tried to photograph it, but the photos really aren't great. The model is so big that it is difficult to get it properly lighted and have a non-cluttered background. The blades stay straight, but they hang at an angle. They are surprisingly sturdy. The problem of using the large turntable as a swashplate is the fact that it doesn't have a sliding ball-joint connection to the central shaft. So I made a linkage system that has that ability of transfering the rotation of the shaft to the turntable, while at the same time giving it the ability to tilt in all directions and move up and down: When building the helicopter I wanted to keep the compartment behind the cockpit completely empty. So all the controls had to go either under the floor, or in the wall behind the cockpit or in the ceiling. So the mixing unit is in and below the floor (it is very similar to the mixing unit you used in your AW169), three beams go up in the wall behind the cockpit and then three levers connect these beams to the pushrods on the swashplate. Below the floor the controls are also routed to the back where they can be operated through 4 HoG's at the underside. This is also where the servomotors can connect to the controls. Videos are even a bigger challenge for me than photos. They take so much time to make that I rather spend on building. So if anyone is interested in making a video send me a PM and you can get the instructions for free.

Hi, I’d like to present my latest model. This time it is large motorized helicopter. It has a rotorspan (if that is a word) of one meter and also the body is one meter long. It has all the controls that you expect in a helicopter: – Collective pitch control – Cycling pitch control – Anti-torque tail rotor control Side view with the doors closed and landinggear retracted The controls can be operated manually either from the cockpit (cyclic sticks, collective levers and anti-torque pedals) or through small HoG knobs on the rear underside of the main fuselage. It is also possible to add four servo motors to the model to control all these functions remotely via IR. Furthermore this helicopter is equipped with a retractable rope at the side, a fully articulated camera/searchlight under the nose and a retractable landinggear. All these functions are motorized as well and remotely controlled via IR. The camera/searchlight in the front can rotate 180 degrees side-to-side and 360 degrees front-to-back Finally the doors in the front can open as well as the sidedoors that can slide backwards to give access to the spacious interior. When closed these doors sit completely flush with the fuselage. The model is so large that it is difficult to get proper photos of it, that’s why I chose in this case to only show renders. Comments, feedback and questions are appreciated as always. Instructions are for sale on my website and the partslist is available on Rebrickable. Topview that shows the massive one meter rotor-span

Wow, that is a seriously good looking car. Very smooth lines and an ingenuous door mechanism. To me however the front is off, it is too high I think for an i8. I first thought you mistyped and meant a M8. Here you can see it actually sits a bit lower than the wheel arches: But to be honest, that is nitpicking. Very well done