CP5670

I used ebay a lot over 10 years ago to get a couple hundred old (even for back then) Lego sets. It's a quite different and less attractive site today. Sniping is important but not that effective anymore, since everyone does it now. The prices used to be better than Bricklink (especially on mislabeled items, or at certain times of the year) but it's often the other way around now, at least on US ebay, and there are also way too many buy it now items at absurd prices that clutter up the place.

I wonder if all 42009 copies going forward will be like this. It's obviously a deliberate change and not a glitch. I definitely like this single booklet better than having numerous smaller booklets. This is how Technic sets once used to be.

This thread has some interesting ideas, but the rotors are pretty large and bulky. I think the easiest way to make a full cyclic/collective rotor is to use the old 1990s rotor parts. I believe all the helicopter MOCs with realistic rotors use those in some form. If you put that CV ball joint on the right kind of axle, the collective can actually move quite smoothly. I used this approach in this model with a white 5.5L axle, which has weaker clutch power than most other axles.

I keep the boxes since most of my collection is from 2000 or earlier, when the boxes were a lot nicer. So far, I have been keeping the modern boxes too just for the sake of continuity, but I will probably throw those away at some point when I start running out of space. Only a few like the Architecture boxes are worth keeping.

You can also route a 9V connection through a PF battery box without any batteries, which takes up space but is a "pure" Lego solution. I often use this to run PF stuff from the wall, since the PF system has no native AC sources like 9V did.

I think 8880 is my favorite one too. It's all about functionality over form. It has some issues (e.g. the wheels are raised too high off the ground) but they can be fixed with simple modifications. I got 8448 when it came out but was always a bit underwhelmed by it as a kid, especially since I had missed out on 8880 at the time. It felt like just an ordinary car compared to 8880. 8466 was a big improvement and was what 8448 should have been, although many of its functions don't work as smoothly as they should.

This is a nice looking model but as others have said, it's too similar to 8265 to be worth buying if you have that set. If the price is going to be $200 then I don't see anything to justify that. 8265 was only $80, is almost as big and has all the same functionality without the motors (and is probably more mechanically complex as a result). I like the new bucket though. I gave up on expecting much with yellow a long time ago. They have long since figured out that their customer base doesn't care about brick quality, and have little incentive to spend any money on improving these issues.

My MOCs basically stay built up forever. I build very slowly and usually put a lot of time into each model, so I always get any new pieces I need from some official set or Bricklink. I do make frequent, minor changes to them over time though.

Thanks for posting your experience on this. Good to see that it worked out well. The last time I moved (only about 220 miles), I had a moving company take most of my stuff but handled the Lego myself with the help of family. I think loose pieces are easy to handle as long as you package them up correctly. I gave the movers all my MISB sets and spare parts. Built models are the main problem, especially if you have a lot of them. Frankly, I wouldn't trust the movers to handle those, especially since your stuff gets mixed with other people's things in the moving trucks, and disassembling and rebuilding them would have taken months and was not an option. I asked the movers for a lot of cardboard and plastic boxes, and bagged each model individually with shopping bags, with heavier models like the modular buildings going in at the bottom. My minivan and a second car had enough room to fit everything at the time. My collection has grown quite a bit since then but I plan to do the same thing if I move again, even if it's a much longer distance.

Those pneumatics are amazing. The trans-light blue pneumatics are part of the Lego Education set that is still available, and the small blue pump and large black pump were included in some regular sets in the past. I've never seen the others though, especially not the light gray or trans-neon green ones. I would use them in this model and replace all the yellow ones, if I could actually buy some.

This is a fantastic model, especially the nonlinear but smooth motions of the drawing arm. I would like to build it too. It's probably also the fact that the model is not too big and needs only a moderate number of pieces, all fairly common ones. Most of the MOCs that people make instructions for are very expensive to get all the pieces for.

I build like this only if I don't have instructions available for a model. In fact, I'm planning to build over the weekend. The set never came with any instructions for it, and the only reference to it is this video in the software that the set included. Yes, I've built some of those box models in the past. Only a few of them are actually worth building, and ironically they are usually the most complicated ones and came from the largest sets.

This would be great. I've never been to a Legoland park, but Stafford is only about 45 minutes from here.

It's good to see a non-licensed, "generic" model for a change. I would expect the final set to look quite different in this case though. This model has a lot of flimsy construction and some illegal connections, as well as a number of discontinued parts.

The Y shape is a normal molding mark and is present on all 1xN bricks to some extent. The cratering at the edges looks really bad though. I wonder if the bags got smashed or something when it was packed.

I try to do the same thing with my MOCs, like this one. There is definitely a lot of potential here. I think there aren't many people who build both Technic and system/minifig-scale MOCs, so we don't see it more often.

Excellent model. I like how well the pneumatics are integrated into it and drive all the main functions, much like 8868.

I never understood why they did this. In the RCX days, Mindstorms and Technic were based off the same pieces and were essentially compatible with each other. Today, Mindstorms uses different connectors, motors and even color schemes from PF. The WeDo system brings some of the Mindstorms functionality to PF, but is highly overpriced and has its limitations.

One interesting remnant of the old system was the 16t dark gray idle gear. They finally changed it last year but it used to still have the teeth shown above, even though everything else from that system had been phased out about 15 years ago. The good thing is that studded Technic bricks have become increasingly common in other themes, as long as you aren't too picky about the color. You can also get them from Lego Education, at about the same $1 price for 1x16s. So there is no shortage of pieces for studded builders like me.

I almost always build like this. I consider stability and strength especially important, and ensure that any fine detailing and greebles I build make no compromises there. I often build MOCs around official Lego themes as well. I like to think of them as "extending" my collection of those themes, as if they had been actual Lego sets. I think people's styles depend a lot on whether they build playable models or static scenes. Both types of MOCs are common here and I like them both, but build the former myself. Models of this type have to be more like official Lego sets and can't fall apart easily. Scenes, on the other hand, are essentially meant to be photographed and tell a story of some kind, so there is more of an emphasis on fine details.

I wonder what the 8856/8412 rotor mechanism would actually do in real life. I think it would simply result in the helicopter's body tilting relative to the rotor, instead of making the helicopter move in a certain direction.

This thing is very cool. I like how compact it is.

You and me both. The catalog dioramas were always a source of inspiration for me, and I wanted to build layouts like that myself. Some of the old theme websites can be found on the wayback machine, but it's sporadic and not that reliable. This was a common problem around the early 1990s. Some of the US catalogs were condensed for no apparent reason, especially with Technic sets. I never knew about 8868, 8094 or several other big Technic sets until finding them on Lugnet many years later, even though they were sold in stores here, while the European catalogs all display them prominently.

I used the old rotor pieces from the 1990s in my helicopter to get the full range of cyclic and collective blade movements. As Blakbird said, none of the official Technic helicopters have really done this properly, but 852 (the very first helicopter) and 9396 come the closest and have the collective part.

I'm a big fan of the catalogs as well, having spent countless hours staring at them as a kid. I think they disappeared in 2004, around the time TLG had their big reorganization. One advantage of catalogs is that they are permanent. The websites for themes from even 3 or 4 years ago have been removed from the Lego site, but the catalogs don't change and remain snapshots of the past. At least we still get the S@H catalogs and occasionally dioramas in the back of the instructions.