Ralph_S

A very nice fire truck, Mrcool1804. I love the level of detail, the brick-built stripes and the functionality, with the mechanism to lower the ladder and the opening doors, for instance. Looking at the reference picture, though, I can't help but think that the model is a bit long. I also don't really like how the wheels and tyres stick out about a stud from the sides. However, since these wheels are themselves two studs wide, building it such that they are flush would mean that there's only two studs between the inner faces of the wheels, which probably is a bit awkward too. Most of LEGO's tyres are far too fat compared to real ones. I understand the need to compromise. The doors on my fire engines are hinged differently, using a technic arm attached to the side rather than hinges in the roof. Rescue Pumper (6) by Mad physicist, on Flickr There are advantages and disadvantages compared to Mrcool1804's solution. When open my doors don't stick out as much and they don't protrude into the roof. However, I have far less space inside because the hinge mechanism is quite bulky and bacause I need room at the top for the doors to slide into. Cheers, Ralph

Cool SWAT team, Triborough. I built a SWAT van and two SWAT teammembers a few years ago and used the same torsos. SWAT van (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr As you can see, I used the aviator helmet with a visor clipped to it. I had no idea that the army helmet exists in black until I saw your picture. They certainly didn't exist two years ago! I applaud your use of LEGO parts rather than custom accessories. Cheers, Ralph

I don't like to put my models in a plastic bag or foil in a closet. I like to have them on display where I can actually see them. So, they do collect some dust. I clean them now and then using a paint brush. You'll need to find one that is soft enough not to scratch your LEGO, but hard enough to get rid of the dust. Pig hair is the way to go IMO :-) The second thing is to not put them in a bedroom, because no matter how well you keep the room clean, there still tend to be more dust in a bedroom than in, say, your home office. Cheers, Ralph

Of course, what lightningtiger wrote really is that the nose is the perfect length if you make the rest of the vehicle bigger! Like many town builders, he likes his minifig scale big. I prefer the smaller end of the scale, which means that in my book a front that is four or five studs wide and a back that's six is fine. If I were to build one of these, the front would probably be five studs wide (6 including mudguards and running boards) and the back 6. I actually have an ambulance that is 7 studs wide, but it is a rather different vehicle than Triborough had in mind. It's a heavy duty vehicle that is supposed to resemble vehicles built on commercial truck chassis (like the Freightliner M series) rather than based on a pickup truck. Cheers, Ralph

It's always nice to see new city MOCs, Triborough, and this is a pretty neat ambulance with nice details. I don't think sticking too closely to what LEGO themselves do will produce the best results. Tucking the wheels in a bit further already was a nice improvement. I hate it when they stick out as much as they do on many LEGO city sets. I agree with Out of Sight that the front does look a bit long -not just compared to an ambulance based on a van chassis, but also compared to those based on pickup trucks. It would look better if you'd use a slightly steeper windscreen part. That would allow you to still use the same roof piece you've used for the top of the cab and make the whole thing a stud shorter and get rid of the awkward gap in the chassis just behind the driver. To me the difference in width between the front and rear looks a bit dramatic. However, unless you're feeling frivolous and want to do exciting and complicated stuff with half-stud offsets or with building things an odd number of studs wide, there is little you can do other than hide it a bit. For instance, adding a few 1x2 plates with doorrail to the bottom of the cab, to add running boards, will tie the front into the back a bit more. Perhaps you could also consider getting rid of the mudguard pieces on the rear wheels and move the wheels in a bit further. That way the difference in track width between the front and back becomes smaller, making the whole thing neater. I did something similar on my own US ambulance a few years ago. As for doors with windows, there aren't any that are well-suited to this, so a brick-built option is probably best. Hinges don't have to be a problem as long as you build them in right at the bottom. You can see how solved this on my British ambulance. Ambulance details (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

It's amazing how they managed with such a limited parts palette. but the only other small plate I could find on bricklink is the 2x2 corner. This isn't going to happen. The only alternative I can think of is getting rid of the cheese slopes altogether and trying to wedge a stack of 1x1 round plates either in black or chrome in there, but I don't fancy that option. What Pontiac are you building? Cheers, Ralph

I'm a bit fussy about helicopters myself, so when I see Super Stallion, there are certain things I expect. Looking at it again I also see a few features of the MH-53 Pave Low. I built one of those myself. MH-53M Pave Low (19) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Your model is a nice helicopter and certainly far better than painting LEGO! Cheers, Ralph

Funnily enough Lasse and I had very much the same conversation when I posted my Scania Recovery truck last year Cheers, Ralph

Thanks Lasse. I was a bit bothered by the lack of grilles in the 'Kidneys' myself, but decided to simply leave holes. I can give putting some silver cheese slopes in there a try, although I wonder how on earth I'd ever attack them to anything, as the only silver plates I have are 1x1! On a BMW 7-series I built many years ago (probably back in 2005, obviously before I discovered the macro function on my camera!) I used grille bricks, which worked OK on that car, but I didn't fancy using them on a three-series, also because they look too rectangular. Cheers, Ralph

Interesting to see where you've gone with this, FROGG, but I'm not so sure I like the overall look. One thing that I always liked about the original model is that it is nice and sleek, like an executive helicopter. Your model looks more robust, as DLuders mentions, but I don't think that's an improvement. I also think the tail rotor looks much too small. I like the interior detail and the technique you used for the windscreen though. Cheers, Ralph

I have some issues with the accuracy of the model, Bojan. You've missed a few things. The real CH-53E has a seven-bladed rotor! (Not easy to pull off in real bricks, perhaps impossible to pull off in LDD). Your model also seems to lack the third engine. You can see it in this picture JSOH Air Show 2006 114 - CH-53E by terpkristin, on Flickr Then there's the colour scheme. I'm not sure whether it is simply artistic license or the limited parts palette, but Super Stallions aren't black. The US Navy used to have some (since retired and replaced by MH-53E Sea Dragons) that were dark grey, but most (operated by the USMC) are a much lighter shade of grey with a somewhat bluish tinge on top. I reckon that actually looks nicer than all black. Finally, the troop seats on the rear helicopter run along the sides of the fuselage with the troops facing inward. That said, I think the overall shaping is really good, with the canted tail and the forward tilt of the rotor, for instance. I am always impressed that people have the patience to build something this complicated on their computers, I certainly couldn't! The functionality is impressive too. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. I'm glad you like it. Thanks. It does, kind-of. I can pose the wheels and they and are connected such that they move together. The whole set-up isn't connected to the steering wheels, however. I have experimented with that in the past on cars of this scale and it was never much of a success. Thank you. You've most likely seen it on flickr or some blog somewhere, because I haven't posted it here before. It's only about two weeks old. The front and rear end of the car were the most difficult. The nose on the real car slopes down a bit, but it didn't really on the first version of it that I built. I had to lower the whole front and that made building the two-tone bonnet extra tricky. On the rear the difficulty was getting everything to fit without ending up with gaps all over the place. I've used a lot of half-stud offsets on this care and they complicated things. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks Prateek. The BMW 'Kidneys' were tricky to pull off and they're not really the right shape, but there's only so much you can do on this scale. I do have some reference pictures from other flickr users. Police BMW in Munich by Yurasov, on Flickr carspotting germany POLIZEI - 2009 to 2010 048 by livinginchina4now, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

Actually no. Yes, I too discovered that there was more to life than LEGO building, but I never stopped building completely. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: As other have mentioned there are a lot of resources out there and looking what other people do may help. Look around you at real things and try to figure out how to recreate them in LEGO. That my help too. However, ultimately if you want to become a good builder, you're simply going to have to do it a lot. I have been building pretty much all my life, since before I was your age. I still keep learning new tricks and ways of doing things with almost every new model I build. Cheers, Ralph edit: OK, so the OP is 'taking a break'. My advice still stands however.

Before I finished my Su-24 Fencer military jet,I actually finished another build which I haven't posted yet. The LEGO car club on flickr, LUGNuts, had cars from Germany as the theme of it's monthly build challenge. I decided to build a German Police car for the challenge: a BMW. Polizei BMW (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Years ago German police cars used to be white with green panels. The scheme has evolved a bit since. Many cars now have silver as their base colour, rather than white and it is becoming more and more common to have blue markings rather than green. I could have chosen blue, of course, but the green looks more distinctive and I had matching stickers from two LEGO sets (many LEGO city sets sold in the Netherlands also include stickers in German in addition to English). Polizei BMW (2) by Mad physicist, on Flickr The rear of the car was also tricky. I didn't want the aft pillars to be too thick, but I also wanted to have side windows. here was a fair bit of fiddling involved to get everything to match up without too many awkward gaps. Polizei BMW (4) by Mad physicist, on Flickr What didn't help with the construction is that I wanted the doors and the boot to be able to open. Polizei BMW (5) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Many of these BMWs are 325Ds, with a six cylinder diesel engine. The engine in my car isn't completely realistic, but at least there is something under the bonnet. Polizei BMW (6) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

Three contributors, but all equally busy I used to write a post per week, but the last post is a few weeks ago. Part of the difficulty is that it is too much of a niche. There are lots of military builders, obviously, but only a relatively small number of people who post stuff that is actually interesting. Cheers, Ralph Edit: I am interested 'Model Team', of course.

I will continue to post my MOCs here, because I know there are people who appreciate them even if they don't all leave comments. I don't leave comments on every MOC I see and like myself. However, I do see a big difference between themes. City MOCs seem to always get comments. However, my Model Team and military MOCs generally get far fewer comments, and I suspect that this also applies to MOCs by other builders in those themes. Technic builders don't know what to make of them and many city builders, who quite possibly would appreciate them, don't see them because they are in the Technic forum. It's the ones that get featured on the front page that get the comments, including comment along the lines of 'I normally don't look at the Technic forums, but I'm glad I did'! Military isn't an actual LEGO theme and gets lumped in with 'other themes' where it's practically invisible. For me personally it's the military models and the model team that require most of the effort. Perhaps Lasse's idea of a classic model team blog might help, although from my own experience (writing a military blog) I know it's hard to keep writing regularly. Cheers, Ralph

It's funny how some people in this thread have commented that if you present it as collecting it's all of a sudden more normal somehow than if you're a builder. I get the complete opposite reaction. People generally don't see the appeal of collecting of what they perceive to be a kids' toy (and to be frank, neither do I), but they do appreciate the creativity that goes into building your own stuff -certainly when they've seen it. It may be intended as kids' toy, but I don't do childish stuff. I got questions about it in a job interview, because one of the members of the committee had googled my name and found lots of LEGO stuff. I told them that it's a hobby, that I'd even been offered a job to design models for a living (which I turned down because I couldn't myself doing that as a career) and that models of mine have found their way into museums, among other places. My line-manager later told me that at first he thought it was a bit odd, but that after the interview he too searched the internet and saw the sort of things I did. It made him realise that I'm creative, innovative, and that I have an eye for detail. These are all traits that would come in handy in my job. I work in a pretty 'serious' place. I'm a lecturer at a military academy. Cheers, Ralph

The truck itself is neat, Teazza, although some of the details on the trailer strike me as a bit random. Did you use a real truck as a reference? I love the load. It really does look like some sort of industrial equipment, a part of chemical plant for instance. Cheers, Ralph

Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I hadn't seen that there'd been a new message in this thread. Thanks for the complements. I often try to add some functionality to my models. On this scale it is a bit easier to add functionality whilst maintaining decent looks than on. say, minifig scale. I'm not a hard=core Technic builder obviously, and the backhoe posed an interesting challenge. They are interesting machines. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. It is much appreciated. It has a been while indeed. I built some helicopters last year, but only a single jet and that was way back in January. I had a few WW-II planes to build, among other things, started a new job and moved house! I'd also built so many on the previous years that I was running out of planes I wanted to build I had great fun building this one, however, and am already thinking about building another jet in the non-too-distant future. Cheers, Ralph

Kudos to you for making instructions of this great model Lasse. I'm sure lots of people will appreciate being able to see how you put all that fancy SNOT work together for the front. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. The nose and the tail were some of the more difficult bits to build on this, so it's nice to see they are appreciated. I don't know whether there were/are any other jets that have a canopy that opens this way. I think it's more common to have hatches that are hinged on the centerline on planes that have side-by-side seating, like on the F-111. F111_20071027_01 by eosdude, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

I can think of a few. I've got my own Peeve related to this. Why is that when I post a MOC here it gets little or no response, while stuff that isn't even built by a member who posts here himself and isn't likely to read the comments does get a lot of comments irrespective of the quality? Lately I've been wondering why I even bother posting MOCs here (myself). Cheers, Ralph

There's a wide range of scales that might be acceptable, (as has been discussed on EB ad nauseam) depending on what you do, but 1/24 will look ridiculous. I think 1/30 is still too big. In fact, I tend to think of 1/40 as the upper limit of the scale. If you build your cars relatively large and want to build the paddock on the same scale, you'll indeed end up with a very large building. The solution may be to use a degree of selective compression. It's what builders of the Miniland sections in the LEGOLand parks do as well. They scale cars and figures to 1/20, but deform most of the buildings slightly. The ground floor may have the right height for 1/20, but the top floors will be lower, for instance, and the whole building will be narrower than it technically should be. It's also what members of the Brickish Association, including myself, did for a large city display we had in 2009. The cars were all scaled 1/45 and the heights of the buildings were large enough for minifigs, but most of the buildings had a much smaller floor area than their real-word equivalents would have when also scaled to 1/45. Cheers, Ralph