CP5670

It would be interesting to test the current limits of the various Lego power sources. I think the highest limits might have been on the 8475 RC buggy's receiver, as it uses two 5292 motors on one output that can each draw over 3A on load. I recently found that the original 1990 control center has very strict current limits and can't even start up a single, unloaded XL motor. The later 1995 control center has higher limits and works well with a single XL or 5292 on each output. The RCX has a 500mA limit per output and reportedly has trouble with these motors, and we know that the PF battery box can handle two XLs on its single output. Not sure what the 9V speed regulator or the NXT are like.

I agree, and I will also say that TLG's approach to this is very old fashioned and shows that their marketing executives are still living in the pre-internet era. Many other companies are starting to understand how these things spread on the internet and how to use it to their advantage as a form of advertising, instead of trying to fight it.

It's okay to post links to them though. 8053 looks like a cut down version of 8421 from that picture. The design of the boom is nearly identical, but there is no motor and the chassis is possibly a little smaller. I wonder why it has that thing on the end instead of a metal hook. It doesn't seem like much of a draw for those of us who already have 8421. I like the look of 8052, even though I doubt it's very mechanically advanced, but it includes a motor and that's going to drive the price up needlessly. It may be the 8264 of next year. 8043 is easily the most interesting model here. I don't see any motors on the arm itself, which is good as I said earlier. It has 4 motors but presumably 6 functions (I see gears behind the tracks, suggesting they are connected to something), so it may use a switching mechanism where one motor is used to change between several functions performed by another motor. That would be great to have, as it's something we haven't seen in a long time (since 8082).

Looks great. I always liked the appearance of these pushbacks in real life, and your model captures the look very well.

If you're talking about the box art, I like that grid and it gave a kind of unifying appearance to the entire Lego Space line. It was used on every theme until Exploriens. I agree with what you said about this set itself though. I like all the other Ice Planet sets, particularly the outstanding 6973 Deep Freeze Defender, but this 6983 set never impressed me quite the same way. It pales in comparison to just about all of the other Space bases except possibly 6988. I think the best bases were 6987 and 6958, and even the other bases (6970, 6971, 6959, 1789 and the monorails) all had some solid construction which this set lacks. I always like to have more of those, in any color. You can find many examples on Brickshelf of what they can be used for. Some of my MOCs use them. It's one of the very few truly large pieces ever made in transparent colors, and that alone makes it useful for a variety of purposes.

I often get into this situation too, and it's probably why I don't have many "major" MOCs even though I've been building for several years. This especially tends to happen with Technic MOCs, where you might learn halfway through the build that some key mechanism is not working as well as it needs to, and you need to start over from scratch. I frequently do this for larger models, just create a very rough outline of the entire thing so I can visualize the overall shape I'm going for.

This is a pretty comprehensive review. Although I think this is one of the weaker Space bases TLG released, and probably the low point of the Ice Planet theme. It's quite large, but as you said the base construction is rather simplistic and uninspiring, and the whole area above the 16x32 baseplate is nearly unused. I do like the launcher raising mechanism and the laser fence though, and the set is a good platform for modifications with its numerous rare and useful parts. All of the Lego sets from those years were like this. The period from about 1987-1993 had almost no stickers and tons of printed pieces, including many that only appeared in one or two sets. There was a thread on this a while ago and it seems that nobody knows anymore, not even TLG.

These instructions might come in handy. I have the CD for this set, but I'm not sure if it still works on modern computers. The models themselves look pretty goofy, but I like the last one. It would make a good Space minifig-scale model with a few changes. That would make sense. They aren't filled with air, so they don't compress and slip like most other tires. All three of the larger sets from 1998 used these wheels, but they weren't seen again after that except in one service pack.

These sets used to be pretty cheap on ebay, at least a few years ago. I got all 7 of the Res-Q sets MISB around 2005, and most were significantly less than their original prices. This theme was around at the same time as Extreme Team, and in fact 6462 came with an Extreme Team guy being rescued. I think the idea was that the Extreme Team did extreme things and got themselves into trouble, and Res-Q was there to bail them out.

That sounds like an epic set. Although if it moves around, I would have expected to see an XL motor or two instead of four Ms. It will be interesting to see where they place the motors. I hope they don't put them right behind the LAs. It would be good if all the motors are in the base of the excavator, which would result in some interesting gearing to get the full 3 degrees of freedom on the arm and bucket. The only time TLG has made a geared excavator with 3 degrees of freedom before was the one in the 8888 idea book 30 years ago.

Cool article. I like your use of the catalog pictures. Res-Q is probably my favorite subtheme from the late 90s, and is evidence that TLG still knew how to make good sets during the town junior era. I think 6473 is the best set of the line. As you said, the theme definitely seems to have been inspired by the earlier Trauma Team set.

I don't really like the scale of this set either. It's not just the fact that it is 8-wide, but the very tall height. It looks too tall in comparison to the minifigs. That being said, this looks a lot like the kind of fire vehicles I used to build when I was a kid. I liked making these oversized all-in-one fire trucks that contained large 8-wide interiors, multiple ladders, an onboard helicopter and various other things. I can certainly see it being popular among its target audience. This set is actually built to the scale seen in some of the old Basic sets, like the 735 fire engine. Those sets were 8-wide and were something in between System and Model Team.

As a grad student, I'm still using a backpack that I've had since 8th grade (10 years ago). Jansport stuff is well built. Is that even with glasses? I'm very short sighted too (seemingly inherited) and can't recognize faces from more than a few feet away, but I have no problems with glasses. I also seem to have especially good motion and color perception to make up for it.

I saw this thread a while ago but only just got around to reading it carefully. Very nice creation. Your explanation is quite detailed as usual, but I probably need to build this myself to fully appreciate how it works. I guess the next challenge is to try and fit this mechanism into the Emerald Night. One interesting way to approach this might be to try to find a linear model directly from observed states of all the elements involved. Hankel operator/H-infinity methods can be used to do this and are supposed to be fairly robust against small nonlinearities. I was thinking of this too, like a more advanced version of the plane in the 8891 idea book.

There isn't much snow here in NJ yet. It's supposed to pile up more tonight. My parents in the DC area say it's a lot worse there. I don't need to go anywhere next week so I don't care about it either way. It's a good time to be building.

That particular slope is actually not textured, and is one of the few slopes like that. The police car in 6398 also uses the slope with the same sticker. The other car you mentioned is this one:

Headlight bricks are known to crack in a particular spot as discussed in the first post, and there have been one or two previous reports of cracked 1x1 slopes, if that's the piece you are referring to. As for the minifigs, so far you are the only one who has experienced this issue to such an extent, so I don't really know what to tell you. My SP cops and Squidman have been fine. You can try checking for square indentations on the insides of the minifig arms, which indicate that they were made in a different, Chinese factory and may be of lower quality.

I am 23, an applied math PhD student currently in my third year. I read and do math for fun. I got my first Lego set, 6503, when I was 1. I never really had a dark age. Maybe more of a gray age, when I stopped collecting minifig sets but was still into Technic, although this had a lot to do with the state of Space and City around the early 2000s. I'm a big PC gamer and have been playing games for almost as long as I've been into Lego. I like games from a wide variety of genres and play both new and old titles regularly. I frequent some other, gaming oriented forums under the same name, and have been posting on forums in general since 1998. I also used to be an active modder in some game communities at one point. This was the big project that I worked on for several years. I have drifted out of it in recent years though, as my free time diminished and the game engines started to become too complex to pick up easily. I used to be involved in competitive multiplayer tournaments for some games in the late 90s, but haven't done that in a long time. Finally, I'm also a computer hardware enthusiast and like to keep track of all the developments in that world. I am very picky about brick quality and can immediately notice any problems in Lego pieces, new or used. I take a fair amount of care to keep my pieces in perfect shape. I'm also picky about image and motion quality in games. I often get annoyed by various irregularities in game graphics that most other people seem to not notice. The books I read these days are all non-fiction (mostly technical monographs), and I don't particularly like travel (with the exception of Lego events) or outdoor activities, for that matter. I would rather be building, gaming and doing math all day.

I have this one. The car design looks a bit strange today, but it's fully enclosed and I liked it better than most of the other, standard cars from that time period.

I like the look of the new 7992 better, but that red claw arm is much cooler than the hook on the new one.

I started adding my sets into Peeron once, but it was taking a very long time as you said. I got through 40 or 50 of them (out of 300-odd) before giving up on it. I also can't add my Bricklink orders on there, which are becoming an increasingly bigger part of my collection.

Cool design. How is the drivetrain connected to the swinging axle? I've actually been building something similar to this, but I was trying to use the driveshaft axle itself as the pivot and found that it was putting too much stress on the axle. I was wondering what that sound was too.

I came back 3 or 4 years later and noticed that many posters had listed their locations as outside Europe, and there was more overall activity as well, so I registered. Lugnet was also pretty much dead by that point, at least the sections I used to frequent.

I use an Excel spreadsheet containing my set list and some basic information on each one (prices I paid, piece counts, etc.), but I'm not too happy with that as I have no way to check the quantity of a particular piece in my collection. I'll need to try out that Brickstore program.

I lurked on EB around that time too, coming from links posted on Lugnet. I was actually looking for a good Lego forum at the time, but the seemingly European focus kept me from joining too. It looked like a local LUG's forum to an outsider. How old is EB, exactly?