skayen

yes. 350 AUD is ~= $350 USD. I am seriously annoyed by that. I placed an order with S@H in USA for delivery to a freight forwarding service--but S@H eventually cancelled my order. Coupled wiht the fact that Lego prohibit Amazon from shipping to Australia is really *&@*# me off. Yes, LEgo isn;'t a charity, but when they're going to that lengths to insulate the australian consumers from the worldwide marketplace, it suggests that the increase in price is NOT just to cover the increased costs of doing business in Australia. Clearly Lego make much more profit (ie. not just revenue) from their price structure. I remain an unhappy camper.

Reply from TLG, in part: Apparently shipping to a freight forwarding company (actually, shipito) is a problem, but if I give a residential address then it's fine---even though I'm still paying wiht an Australian credit card. Honestly, that's a non-answer. If you're happy to accept money from an Australian credit card albeit shipping to a residential address in USA, then it should be no different from doing the same but shipping to a commerical proxy which specialises in redirecting mail---/espcially/ if I write to TLG offering to provide images of my credit card and Australian residential address. I am actually pretty angry about TLGs insistence on keeping the Australian market insular from the rest of the world. If they're incapable of doing business in Australia while keeping costs reasonable, then they should step back and let us import lego ourselves rather than actively stopping us. Stopping us is a tacit acknowledgement that they cannot or do not want to price lego in australia at similar price points as the USA and elsewhere.

A follow up from Amazon (who I also queried about why they refuse to ship most lego ships to me) confirms that Lego is also restricting trade to control market prices. Nice work, lego.

Hi, I am venting annoyance @ Lego Inc. The price of 10227 in Australia is $350 AUD, which is roughly $356 USD. Naturally, I jumped on the 4th of May Star Wars sale to pick up the B-Wing at $99, shipping to a freight forwarder somewhere in USA. Even with the exorbant shipping costs from USA to Australia (approx $80 USD!!), it'd work out to be about 50% off the price here.... ... except Lego saw what I did and has cancelled my order, siting 'privacy concerns': I remain unconvinced and unimpressed. There's a process for dealing with credit card fraud, both legal and through the credit card vendor, and neither of them involve vendors refusing sale. It'd be fine if Lego's price in Australia was commenserate with the price in USA, but it's not. It'd even be tolerable if they accepted their /own/ argument that the cost of doing business in Australia is so high that they can't reduce their margins and then step back and let third parties succeed in delivering products here where Lego fails---but they're now blocking that avenue, too, obsensibly to 'protect consumer privacy', but really to enforce regional pricing. Well done, Lego. Nice way to foster good will among your customers. John

Hi, yes, I was on leave of absence from my project. I haven't given up on it, I was just getting sufficiently annoyed that I had to stop for awhile ;-) I do have some non-lDD modelling s/w but never really got into them, but I think you're right that I should try them out to see if they're better at sorting out the kinds of problems I was having. I'll also post some screenshots of the angle plate arrangements to illustrate why I chose to angle them the way I did, too. cheers, John

heh, thanks, but I haven't completely abandoned it---I just needed to take a break from it for awhile. I had been working on it on/off for several months and I just needed to do something else for a long while. I'll resume it sometime soon :-) cheers John

Hi, well, the current news is that I've broken my model :-/ "But," you think, "that is impossible if it's only virtual!". Sadly, no :P I think most of the problem is that the way I go about building my model is completely not how LDD designers intended, and it's causing... problems. Previously I had my hull plates attached by two anchors (one for either side), but the left hull were removed in the process of adding the undercity engine, and so they ended up just floating in space. When I finally got around to adding in the hinges to support them, LDD kept refusing to snap them into place, presumably because they're out by 10^-3 brick units, or something ridiculous, and LDD just refuses to anchor them and play with the hinges after the fact. So, in order to debug the fitting (ie. find out which part of the model is conflicting with the hull), I had to partially disassemble the hull and add it back in piece at a time. But... another problem with how I attach the plates means that it's tedious/frustrating to find the right angle. See, 10221 (and your model, and presumably others) anchors the plates along the diagonal edge of the ship and attach them to the long right angle edge (ie. not the hypotenuse) of the wedges, Just to be different, and for other aesthetic reasons, I figured it'd be easier to get the centre seam to be nice and straight if the wedge plates were angled so their hypotenuse aligned with the outer edge of the hull, not in the centre. To accommodate this, I need two degrees of freedom (and possibly 3) in my way. And apart from the RHS which somehow LDD seems more happy with, it's nto working all that well. So, it's partially disassembled and lying in a hideous multicoloured broken state :( I am incredibly impressed, Bob De Quatre, with the speed and ease you built your model. =) Mine has taken a lot, lot longer and it's no where near finished =( cheers John

that is true, but I think the key insight is that the axles should be rotated until they form the x as shown /before/ the gears are meshed in place. If the OP's axels don't form an X like in the diagram, then partially dismantle the gearing so you can spin the axles independently, and refit the gearing in that position! hope this helps. good luck! cheers John

The 10221 was $770 AUD in Australia, though I think its price has come down somewhat since then. That's 480 Euros, or ~770 USD. In.Sane. I imported my copy from USA at some ungodly insane shipping cost (but 12.5% off at Amazon:D). The Imperial Shuttle goes for ~$450 AUD, too. Seriously, Lego... I'd buy more stuff if I didn't have to keep paying insane costs to ship a mostly empty box from Europe/America to me (and have it STILL work out to be cheaper than buying it locally). Although 10221 has a number of issues, at least it's not set in stone :-) You can buy it for the base and modify it until you're happy with it! cheers John Hi, that's cool, but what about the 10221's city do you prefer? Things I don't like about the city include the mixture of dark/light grey bricks and that the structure behind the buildings is largely lost. I reckon the SSD has very clear trenches between buildings, e.g. and doesn't really have a lot of "upwards facing" greebles, like the plethora of clips that the 10221 uses to add detail, which is largely why I kept the tops of my buildings flat. If you could tell me what you like about the 10221 over my model, it'd help me re-evaluate what I've done, so I appreciate your feedback! cheers, John

yep, I see that you are using the same wheel hubs that I was considering, before I opted for the sleek aerodynamic goodness of turbines :-) The engine assembly on the model /is/ properly cylndrical (albeit with a varying radius); all the 'detail' is saved for the support around it. In related news, I would recommend cylinders rather than cones for the smaller engine :-) heh ;-)

heh, well, in my model the big engine uses 60208 for the end and 41531 for the body, and the small engine uses 30360. The LGR 10221 uses 30360 for the big engine and 2x2 cylinder pieces for the small engine. I upgraded my engines because I want my Executer to travel faster (which also explains why I will assemble it in red, too;-), but mainly because my version is wider. You should check out how your arrangment sits in its gap in the hull. While you can get away with almost anything with the other engines that 'hang off' the engine bay, the forward engines have to fit in the gap, but also fill it out. The bottom plates on my hull underwent many, many adjustments until I was happy with the arrangement :-) Edit: I noticed that your engines aren't all the same, which is interesting. I use two types depending on size (ie. the forward layout is ABA, the middle layout is BA and the rear layout is BBB). I think your more detailed look is kinda cool btw, but mine are just cylinders ;-) Edit2: depending on how much you care, but check how you stagger your engines. I think your forward engines should move outwards a little more. The middle engines overlap the inner front engine, and strictly speaking (although I don't do this myself), the rear engines are wider spaced than the front and middle, but I can see you've got that under control. Just more things to consider :-) Edit3: and here is a shot of my engine arrangement. It looks crazy because my SSD is in for servicing, and I colour things to make my life easier. (I am currently rebuilding the top missing plate.) Also, this is my new tail version 3! Slightly thinner, slightly shorter! Now with no added sugar! cheers John

I am sure it's "approved" by Lucas Inc, and by definition it becomes canon once it's approved. But the same people who give their seal of approval to any number of starwars related inventions are also the ones who approved midichlorians, obiwan meeting anakin when he was a boy (yet, is "already a great pilot"), c3po being built by anakin, &c... So, if they'll approve that, then they approve all manner of sillyness. Three winged Tie Fighters? <rubberstamp> An Elcipse-classed SSD that is designed to ram ships? (Because that's... sensible...?!) <rubberstamp> Yoda: "the last of the jedi you will be." random other writers in books: "hey, wait a second... oh, and btw, jedi powers are from a parasite...". :) &c. It's a pity, but polluting the universe pretty much ruins a lot of things for me by association. But I guess I'm just weird like that IMHO, Star Wars jumped the shark coincidentally after ROTJ and before all these other crazy Super Star Destroyer classed ships were invented :) But each to their own, and if people enjoy expanded universe, then good luck to them. =)

y-e-s... but then it seems like anyone can invent something sci-fi, pay the license fee to Lucas, and suddenly it becomes acceptable to badge it as StarWars and pay the StarWars tax. It's how Lego is justifying the high prices for things like the Sith infiltrator mumble. I am sure it's possible for me to write a StarWars novel which features the Death Star 3 as a huge grey cube of death, pay the required license fee to Lucas Inc, and then somestage later Lego will release a 20x20 stud cube of grey blocks for the low-low price of $99.95 USD (higher in Australia, of course). The fact it's become such a cash-cow cheapens it somewhat for me; or, perhaps, I think the mess that's been done to the prequel has ruined the magic of the OT. For me, at least. I did read some of the books, but they sufficiently annoyed me so I stopped. For example, Luke has an apprentice in one of his books and he says to him, "you can go into this cave. Look, it's full of the Dark Side and you can choose to take your weapons if you want, but it's up to you!" and the guy thinks "well, i better take them just in case.. better be safe than sorry!" and it came across as really poorly written. Luke takes his weapons on Dagobah because he's /afraid/; it's his FEAR that he takes with him into the cave, not his weapons, that matters. The weapons are just a clue to us, the audience, and it was really clumsily played in the book where the writer is able to tell us what characters are feeling. To my mind, it falls under the umbrella of out-sourcing the mythology just to rebadge some sci-fi ideas into a marketing ploy. Anyway, that's beside the point :) /Some/ of the ships in the PT and expanded universe do look cool, but most of them do not. IMO, of course. cheers John

in the expanded universe, yes... but I am somewhat cynical about the Lucas-selling-out-licenses-so-random-people-can-inevent-stuff :P "you want to write a book abotu starwars? certainly, my licensing fee is $x and you can make whatever random stupidness you desire!" =) But, then, I dislike stuff from the prequel trilogy too...