OzBen

Congrats to the winners and all of the entrants. Great models from all and a really good competition. Hopefully the next comp is at a quieter time of the year so I have the time to contribute too!

I have managed to buy and build most of this years technic sets (and a few other large system sets) For technic... 42000 - Grand Prix Racer 42002 - Hovercraft 42004 - Mini Backhoe 42005 - Monster Truck 42006 - Excavator 42007 - Moto Cross Bike (x2 for the A & B model) 42008 - Service Truck 42009 - Mobile Crane Mk 2 41999 -The Boss I also managed to get my hands on a few sets that I have been keeping an eye out for 8275 - Bulldozer 8262 - Quad Bike 8435 - 4WD 8053 - Mobile Crane 8458 - Silver Champion (x2, I wanted one for parts) 8448 - Super Street Sensation 8265 - Front Loader 8294 - Excavator 8439 - Front End Loader 8455 - Back Hoe Loader (received and built yesterday!!) and a couple of Ferrari sets to finish off my collection 7556 - Shell Ferrari F1 (My first Model Team set) 8156 - FXX 8652 - Enzo looking back over the list I'm surprised how many sets I have acquired over the last 12 months..... Since I only have a couple of "out of production" sets still on my wanted list I think 2014 will be a year of less sets and more MOC's for me, well that's the plan anyway....

23:5 13:3 22:2

The last ones I want are the toughest to get at a decent price 8480 space shuttle 8455 back hoe 8466 off roader 8880 super car I have some paypal funds and bricklink is calling... LOL

Hahaha Original idea for sure. Well done Doc :-)

I just watched your video, great work!!! Winching the damaged buggy onto the trailer, very clever My new favourite, you have my vote :thumbup:

Doc_Brown won a 8466 that I had my eye on last week, I was busy at work and missed out on it :-P

Different, unique and just awesome. I love it!!! Very well done!

Looking good man, great to see it all finished off the thought had crossed my mind..... im gonna have to start charging you shortly LOL

Completely normal :-)

Absolutely stunning. And full RC too!! Wow

dokludi, you are a machine!!! LOL Looking forward to seeing your early interpretation :-)

I visited the new Mr Toys, Toyworld in indooroopilly today. It's MASSIVE! Pretty good selection of lego right at the front if the shop and quite a few sets are priced just below RRP, eg 10234 opera house for $379.

I saw this at Brisbricks and it is just so awesome, so many cool little details throughout the layout. The longer you look around the more funny and clever details emerge. VERY well done!!

I wouldn't worry about the tent, do some testing first otherwise it looks like you are all sorted!! Show is some pics!!! And yes Belgian beer is awesome :-)

The size should be ok for the IR remotes as long as it's not to brightly lit. Your issue may be reaching into the middle if a car tips over, might be a bit of a stretch. We are looking at going to about 40cm from the ground next time, our ramps and bridges are 40cm above the base and that puts it over 1m above ground, way too high for the 4-7 year olds that were driving. Hope that helps :-) Hope that makes sense, Heineken has been consumed....... :-P

Thanks for all the comments guys yeah, it fell off at the bottom of the ramp on the right side of the course, none of the crawlers fell off the ramps or bridges so we did something right there Hey Brett, do you have a pic of the Shadow Monster all smashed up? So funny, the bystanders were horrified but as I kept saying all weekend, "You can't break it, it's Lego!! You can just put it back together again" The IR was a little bit of an issue with the brightly lit arena, originally we intended to have the kids stand at the front corner of the course but we ended up telling them to chase their crawler around the course so the IR signal only had to go a short distance. A learning for next time I suppose and with that we will also need to drop the course height by about half so that the kids point the remote control down towards the crawler. On another note, we are still looking for suggestions for improvement too so if you have an idea let us know some ideas Brett and I have thrown around include a seesaw ramp and a larger and slightly challenging rock pile also looking at about 50% larger total footprint and wider driving path on the ramps and bridges. Of course we have a few cool tech ideas that we will keep under out hat for fear of failure lol

Hi Guys, I know the below write up is a long read, my apologies. Brett will be posting up pics below  Now for my perspective on building the course and going to the Brisbricks show to display to the public..... So I happened to have a couple of weeks annual leave with nothing planned just as I started to hear about the Brisbricks event that was scheduled for the Labor Day long weekend. Brett (Doc_Brown) and I had been chatting through PM’s and we messaged each other at almost exactly the same time saying to each other that we should go to the show and “fly the Technic flag” so to speak. I contacted the Brisbricks president, Roger, and he was really encouraging so we decided to dive in and do it! A plan was hatched and over 2 weeks I visited Brett about 5 times on the sunshine coast (about 1hr north of Brisbane) to plan and then get to work building the course using our own ideas and suggestions from a thread that Brett posted (thanks guys!!!) In between my visits Brett chipped away at the course adding details and generally doing a lot of the boring stuff so I got to do the fun stuff when I dropped by, thanks mate!! During this time we also attended a Brisbricks social event to meet the members and talk about our ideas and to show off an early version of my crawler MOC. I gotta say the Brisbricks members had a lot of great ideas and suggestions gathered from years of putting on shows so that helped a heap with our planning! I handed my crawler to one of the kids to have a go and gauge their reaction and when I saw how the kids there driving it around the table and over other peoples Lego I though we might be onto something..... Like a lot of Technic AFOL’s I tend to build a MOC, take some photos or a video and then if I think it is interesting enough I will post details in an online forum. After that I break it apart and build my next MOC. If I have a bit of a play with a MOC or official set it is generally only for a total of a few hours of its life. Our reasoning behind building an interactive display was that motorized Technic models should be played with and a show like the Brisbricks show would give us a chance to show people MOC’s that we created, as well as what Lego has to offer in the Technic category, and have kids play with them and have fun. At the show we had 4 crawlers going around a course for 8 hours continuously, 3 days in a row. Much more play than a model would usually see in its lifetime!! I should also mention that we had a table for some static MOC’s, Brett had his black Hot Rod and his gigantic Patria, I displayed my Honda CB400-4 and also Rosco’s Lotus 43, which included a big write up about Luca and his F1 car design talent as well as credit to Blackbird and Mocplans.com for the instructions. I didn’t receive any questions at all about the Lotus all weekend so I assume lots of people read the write up which is great for the guys  There were soooooo many people taking photos of Brett’s Hot Rod, and a lot of people were asking if it was motorized etc, the public loved it! I got some great feedback about my Honda MOC, the best was from a guy who loved it because it looked just like his 400 that he had been riding that morning!! How stoked am I !!!  Readers of this part of the forum know that Technic doesn’t get the best coverage as people don’t see it in the same way as traditional Lego so we wanted to introduce this sometimes forgotten part of Lego to the public and in my opinion we raised the profile of the Technic brand for those that saw what we had at the show. I had so many parents asking questions like - • Can you buy these in shops? • How much would one cost? • My child is X years old, could he/she build that? • What would be a good first Technic set for my son/daughter for $X • Do you do kids birthday parties (yes seriously I was asked more than once lol) We also heard that a retailer that set up a shop at the show took all of their 9398’s from 2 of their stores to sell at the show and sold them all. And of course when I saw a Technic set in someone’s hand I gave them the thumbs up  So how did it go at the show? Well we thought we would have a few kids (and "big kids") wanting to have a go at driving the crawlers, and that we would run 2 crawlers at a time. We didn't think we would need to run all 4 at a time (leaving only 1 spare) and form a queue and enlist the help of my wife, Emily, to keep the kids moving through and having a play!! We were super busy from start to finish each day for the 3 days...... Over the whole long weekend we only had a model go off the display 3 times, Brett's 41999 (rear end smashed – 20 min fix), my MOC “Shadow Monster” virtually broke in half with bits dangling off it everywhere (20 min fix) and Brett’s “Reaper” which is built so solidly that in only lost a wheel and was back driving around the course straight away. We had 4 sets of 3rd party tires rotating amongst the crawlers their grip is just so much better than the standard Lego tires, most of the time the 9398 had Crazy Crawlers, Shadow Monster had Rock Crushers XT’s, the 2 Boss 41999’s shared a set of Ansmans and the Reaper had the “Two face” tires and sometimes the Ansmans. No real feedback to report except for the “Two Face” tires, they are useless on crawlers but on the Reaper they were awesome as it is so powerful and sturdy. The rest of the tires performed perfectly. one thing we saw twice was the standard Lego tires popped off the new 6 hole rim. it seems that along with the tires going onto the new rims easier they also come off easier...... Now I must add at this point that there was a little bit of “playwear” evident after the show. Of course we did expect this to be the case as you can’t expect to drive a crawler around a course of wood and rocks for 24 hours and expect it to look pristine at the end, each crawler rolled over dozens of times so both 41999 Boss’ are looking rather 2nd hand. The shock absorbers on all of the models are scraped up from the constant rubbing against the springs. Most panels on all of the crawlers are lightly scratched and the special silver parts on the 41999’s, well just take a look at the photos below, but hey, they were used as intended so they wear their scrapes and scratches with pride! There were plenty of things we learnt over the weekend and we already have a big list of changes and improvements for next time, but overall I would say it was a resounding success judging by the smiles on the kids faces and the awesome comments, feedback and “thank you’s” that we received from the parents. Some fun numbers AA Batteries used - 300+ AA battery boxes loaded and ready to go - 15 Over the edge crashes - 3 Number of times we were asked - "it that Lego"? - 1000 (possible exaggeration....) percentage of dads that "helped" his child drive - 50% Thin liftarms broken by over enthusiastic use of the remote controls - only 2! Battery boxes dead - 2 (fried the electronics....) Shock absorbers worn – 12 (see photos) Motors killed - 2 possibly, the L motors in my 41999 Boss were very slow at the end of the show even with fresh batteries..... Kids receiving 9398 this Christmas - I reckon at least 12 ( had a lot of conversations with parents about how and where to buy the 9398) Cans of Red Bull I consumed over the 3 day weekend – 12 Cups of tea & coffee drunk by Brett over the weekend – 12 (at least LOL) Number of kids that had a play with a crawler 5min per child = 12 kids/hr 12 kids/hr x 8hrs = 96 kids per crawler per day 96 kids x 4 crawlers = 384 kids each day 384 kids x 3 days = 1152 kids............ so roughly 1000 kids + or - a couple of hundred had a play with a Lego Technic rock crawler....... At roughly 11pm on Monday night I finished helping the Brisbricks guys pack up the show and I was absolutely exhausted...... but so glad that we did it. I had an absolute ball, I seriously don’t know who was having the most fun, the kids playing with Lego or Brett and I manning our display and teaching kids how to drive, repairing battle damage, testing and replacing batteries and fixing remote controls. LOL On top of all this we managed to squeeze in a BBQ, some fine whiskey, a few beers and we all went to the first round of the speedway season on Saturday night, http://www.brisbanespeedway.com.au/, and they had monster trucks there..... heaven LOL In summary, if you have a chance to exhibit at a show, go for it. If you are thinking about building a crawler course and you have the space, do it, it’s a bunch of fun!! :thumbup: :thumbup: Now for the Pics and Videos........ Brett!!!!!! (master editor )

With the remote control set up for 9398/41999I have tried a bunch of configurations where there is a "steering wheel" on top so it feels more natural to use but they have all had at least one weak spot and tend to fail. im looking for ideas for a fairly strong set up thoughts? cheers Ben

Doc and I could do with some of those after last weekends carnage......... lol

Oh do we have some photos to share....... If you are precious about your 41999 boss then don't look at this thread in the future LOL

Day 2 is done....a couple of teasers for you....... yes, we were prepared we REALLY needed these after today lol

I'm on a break...... Kids are going crazy over it lol 4 crawlers going at once....... Pics later once the show finishes and we have recovered...... :-D I gotta go back and save Doc hahaha

All done and ready for tomorrow!!!! Need to take some photos to share :-)

hahahaahah