Ralph_S

I'd love to see one, but those are hardly traditional in Europe! I reckon that if there will be a new fire truck, they'll go for a compromise again. Something that looks as though it could be both European or American. It is all just speculation of course. I obviously don't work with the same constraints as the people who design sets in terms of complexity, fragility and the sheer number of parts that go into them. I wouldn't expect LEGO to bring out a truck with a 7-wide body. The current one (set 7239) has about 200 parts. I reckon mine has about twice as many. Cheers, Ralph

My truck is actually no wider than most of trucks in LEGO city sets! The big difference is that I don't like it when the wheels stick out of the sides, as they do on most of the trucks LEGO make, so rather than a 6-wide body with fenders and tyres sticking out, I build the body 7 studs wide with the wheels tucked underneath. The main problem with my truck is that it is far too complicated and fragile to ever be a set. The reason why I showed it was because it shows the style of fire truck I wouldn't mind seeing LEGO do. It is very well possible to get that same style (if not the level of detail) in a simpler vehicle with a six-wide body is very well possible. There are lots of them on flickr/brickshelf. Check out these two for instance Engine Co 1 & 2.b by krazzy karl, on Flickr Even those modern US trucks look nothing like most European trucks. The companies may be owned by the same parent companies, but US fire engines still tend to have much more gaudy colour schemes, more chrome and all kinds of other bells and whistles that you simply won't find on most European trucks. The 2005 fire truck by LEGO was a nice compromise. It could pass as a somewhat sober looking US truck as well as a somewhat gaudy European one I can imagine why they still haven't replaced it. It's been a best-seller and still looks good. Cheers, Ralph

I saw the red hot rod a few days ago, but didn't get around to commenting. Both cars are nice -I particularly like the V8 on the red car- and the way you've displayed them, de-marco, is wonderful. The only suggestion that I have is that perhaps you could add some telegraph poles alongside the road. Cheers, Ralph

Most of their fire trucks do look vaguely European. It never ceases to amaze me how different US fire trucks look from their European counterparts. I would love to see LEGO bring out a truck that looks American, sort of like this. Rescue Pumper (13) by Mad physicist, on Flickr However, I can't something like this it selling very well to 8-year olds in Europe. Of course, LEGO do have a US fire engine with the fire brigade set, but it has an old-timer look to it. Cheers, Ralph

There is lots of interesting stuff that goes on at a space centre, so it has the potential of being a very interesting project. I fear that this vehicle will distract from that. Years ago I had the opportunity to visit ESTEC (part of the European Space Agency) and saw some of the facilities where they test satellites. Searching google images for 'Estec test facilities' ought to give you some ideas. Cheers, Ralph

The satellite looks interesting, but I think there's a bit of an issue with the concept of the MOC as a whole. Satellites are normally put together in clean rooms and carefully packaged before being transported to the launch centre. I highly doubt they're ever put on a truck and exposed to the elements or driven by a guy in dungarees and wearing a hard-hat -certainly not with the solar panels extended. I probably haven't given you quite the suggestions you are looking for, but this MOC doesn't make sense to me. Where on earth did you get the idea for this? Cheers, Ralph

I'm not so sure how well Eurobricks already works in terms of being somewhat of a MOCers academy. MOCs being showcased can be source of inspiration and I enjoy some of the general LEGO-related banter, but I think it's rare to see comments that actually give useful tips for improvements -and not just on my own MOCs. I am glad that Eurobricks is a welcoming place for all AFOLs, irrespective of their specific interests and skills, and it's a good thing that people are being very nice and encouraging to each other, but I do get the impression that most people who post their creations here aren't looking for criticism. Most of the comments given are along the lines of 'nice' and 'great' and whatnot, even if the creation is a bit rubbish IMO. You cannot rigidly define criteria for what is great and what isn't, but there are big differences in the level of experience and skill of builders who post their MOCs here. The MOCs can't all be great and they aren't. What do people do when they see a MOC they don't like? I suspect that they just don't comment at all. BTW, this immediately makes me wonder what's wrong with the MOCs that I posted that got no comments. I'd rather hear somebody telling me that they don't like it than the MOC in question being ignored completely. I'm a stubborn fellow and think I generally know what I'm doing, but I don't always get things right and a different perspective can help. I do write comments that often do contain some criticism (which I do try to balance by also complimenting the features that I do like), but I'm not sure the criticism is appreciated by everyone. Receiving criticism and dishing it out isn't an easy thing to do. Perhaps that is where an explicit MOCers academy could help. If you post your MOC or work in progress there, you can make it explicit that you are looking for feedback aimed at improving it. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. I'm taking a wild guess here, but would you happen to be Dutch by any chance? There are plenty of countries that had snow in December, of course, but we had unusual amounts of snow in December and your truck looks European. Cheers, Ralph

Nicely done, sleepie, and welcome to EB. I love the level of detail you've managed to achieve and I like the size. It is a bit too colourful for my tastes, although I that many of these trucks are basically commercial vehicles pressed into service in winter for this task by adding equipment that is not necessarily colour coordinated with the paintscheme of the truck, so perhaps it does add to the realism. Cheers, Ralph

Very nice Selander. I remember seeing a few of these before (both here and on flickr), but it's nice to see them all together. I don't remember seeing the dump trucks before though. It's funny how scale so often leads to discussion. These truck are obviously too narrow compared to many of the cars and vans LEGO sells in city sets, but as we have discussed before, it is mainly a matter of being consistent -a big advantage of filling our LEGO city streets with MOCs rather than sets. Cheers, Ralph

It was a quick and dirty build. We'd had a barbecue with a few beers and felt like doing something a bit silly after we were finished eating . We used two M-motors, a large battery box, a single IR receiver and a remote control (obviously). The reason why we used two M-motors was because we used them to drive two props, which by driving them at different speeds gave us (some) directional control without the need for a rudder. We prevented water from getting to the motors by driving the props through a chain drive. The biggest issue that we had was that we didn't have a suitable prop. The ones we intended to use didn't work. Perhaps their shape/ the speed at which we drove them isn't actually suitable for use in water. Without getting too technical, while they may be nice scale replicas of a real propeller, this actually means that on the smaller scale they are unlikely to work. Instead we used bugger props, which -frankly- looked a bit ridiculous. they also picked up rather a lot of weeds! DSCN3335 by Lego Monster, on Flickr The

You find a new place to live and decide that rather than using it for your bed, the largest bedroom will be for your LEGO. (You should see the room I'll be using as my new LEGO room. 25 square meters baby!) There a small part of the fingernail on your thumb missing because you use the thumb to pry apart bricks. (I have this and noticed the same on the finger of a LEGO-building friend of mine) Cheers, Ralph

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt It isn't pretty, but it was fun! Cheers, Ralph

From my point of view the aesthetics of a set of instructions matter far less than their clarity and instructions are clearer if they have a more-or-less standard format. That way, if you've built something following a certain set of instructions, the instructions for another model will already look familiar. LEGO's own instructions all follow essentially the same format. LPub does offer the possibility of customisation, by the way. For instance, you can choose an image as a background. Quite why you'd want to do that is beyond me, but it is possible. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to an alternative package, of course. Azzeppa, glad to know you managed to solve the problem! Cheers, Ralph

I made several instructions using LPub a few months ago, also being new to it, and found it relatively easy. I certainly didn't have the problem you have, so I can only guess what's causing it. Do you have a program used for rendering images installed? LPub needs one. LDGLite and LDView are two options. Furthermore, LPub needs to know the path where to find that program. You can change the path by clicking Configuration and then Preferences in Lpub. Cheers, Ralph

In some respects I'm sure the same that I wrote earlier in this thread about MOCs getting front-paged applies to the MOC expert title. A MOC that one person finds fantastic might not be all that impressive in the eyes of other people and vice-versa. I do have the MOC-expert title. I also have a considerable collection of parts, but I wish I had an abundance of time! Cheers, Ralph

I have no notion of the significance or psychology attached to colours, but if I look at the world around me, I don't see all that much orange and purple or lime. So, are they underrepresented in LEGO? I don't think so. They are fine as accent colours, but I reckon few builders require large quantities of these colours to use them as the predominant colour in their MOCs. I do like to use some of the rarer colours to build cars with. I have a lime green Lamborghini Miura and an orange Porsche 911 and there are a few other LEGO car builders out there who may use orange or lime as the main colour for some of their MOCs, but I think we may be exceptions. On these cars, of course, the colours are specifically chosen to make the car stand out. Cheers, Ralph

I very much agree. Sometimes getting things to look good may require fancy build techniques, but what matters most is whether the end product looks good and not how 'clever' the build techniques are. I've seen really ugly MOCs full of clever SNOT techniques and I've seen fantastic MOCs built largely studs up. Cheers, Ralph

Interesting topic. I don't particularly mind studs showing, certainly not if they are on top of the model I build. I really like the aesthetic of the models built for the LEGOland parks and their builders often deliberately show studs. My models are realistically shaped and detailed, but are obviously made out of LEGO and I actually prefer them that way. Generally, SNOT building for me is a not a way to hide studs. For me it's a way of creating shapes or working features that I can't really do otherwise. Take my DAF truck and my Chinook helicopter, for instance. At a first glance it may look as though I only used 'old-school' studs up building, but if you look more closely you'll see that both are full of SNOT techniques. DAF XF105 (5) by Mad physicist, on Flickr CH-47D Chinook by Mad physicist, on Flickr The same applies to most of my MOCs. For me it's all about the shape. I actually get asked fairly frequently whether I do SNOT building, which strongly suggests that whoever asks the question doesn't know the difference between a SNOT technique and studless building. Cheers, Ralph

I don't really collect sets. I am primarily a builder and look at sets primarily as parts packs. Some really nice ones I do build, for instance the cafe-corner type buildings. I also have a Taj Mahal and Grand Carousel still unbuilt in their boxes. I haven't had the opportunity to build them yet, but I probably will. The vast majority of the sets that I buy, however, are parted out straight out of the box. I recycle the boxes. I don't see the point in keeping them. Cheers, Ralph

The P-38 is a lovely plane and you've captured many of its features in your model There are a few things I don't like, though. On the real plane the shape from the bottom of the engine to the base on the tailfin follows a single continuous curve, whereas on yours there's a bit of a bump (which it shares with the P-38 by Mechanized brick, by the way). The wheels on the real plane retract aft and while it would undoubtedly be a tight fit, I reckon you can find space behind the wing in the tailboom to store them. I reckon you made the central fuselage 5 studs wide -not a particularly easy thing to do- to find enough space for the nosegear, but the fuselage on the P-38 is really narrow. In fact, I reckon it would be at most three or fours studs wide on the scale of your plane. It will complicate construction of the nosegear, but my suggestion would be to make it four studs wide. This is undoubtedly a very difficult aircraft and I applaud you for having a go. Cheers, Ralph

Yep. Definitely mold numbers. Many of the molds LEGO use can have multiple parts in them at the same time. In 30376 2-02 30376 is probably the part number, 2 is probably the number of the mold (they do wear and are replaced from time to time), 02 is the number of the individual position within the mold. Nothing particularly exciting. Cheers, Ralph

Sure you are, but that doesn't actually answer my question. I think you have a chip on your shoulder and it doesn't suit you. Ralph

I don't know the site in question, but I have a question for you. If it's all that terrible, why do you care? Just don't bother with it and be a member of a forum that you do like. Seems perfectly straightforward to me. Cheers, Ralph

As a bit of a side note, I find the different styles of Cafe Corner compatible buildings I see on-line -including some on display in this thread- quite interesting. The sets themselves tend to be quite elaborately ornamented and many people who build their own seem to have adopted that style. I suspect this is at least in part because that way the MOCs look good combined with the sets. My own buildings aren't as ornamented, typically, mainly because the models I make are supposed to represent the kind of buildings that you'd normally find on a British high street. The ornamentation on the sets is a bit much for my tastes and I normally don't combine my buildings with the sets. While I did build the Cafe Corner Compatible sets that I own -building a set in itself is a pretty rare thing- I don't have any of them in one piece any more. These two are the most elaborately ornamented I have. British buildings by Mad physicist, on Flickr Buildings like these do require a fair amount of bricks and it isn't easy to find the right level of details for the particular style, but I think these show that it is very well possible to build realistic buildings without having to go to extremes with the exterior details. If I'd have to spend several months on the same building, I'd probably go Cheers, Ralph