Ralph_S

That's very clever and useful. Here and on flickr people often ask how to make a power functions RC car work. Since the ones that I built were also somewhat specialised using very specific constructions and parts, my own solutions aren't always particularly useful for other builders. This chassis looks like a great way to get started. I shall refer them to your pictures in the future Cheers, Ralph

I'm not a big fan of Bionicle in general and consequently have very few Bionicle parts. I think I have a single Bionicle set that I won as a prize in a build contest. Of course, some parts that were originally used only in Bionlce sets made their way into others, such as some of the racers sets from a few years ago, but I don't recall ever using any of the parts for my MOCs. There's a single exception. I managed to get my hands on a fair few bionicle chain links. It is a very useful part, that I've used for the cargo hooks on my Chinook helicopter, for instance. I'm curious to see what other people have used Bionicle parts for. Cheers, Ralph

If you have this in your town something funny is going on, but I appreciate the bloggery. Thanks. I can fit a minifig in the cockpit, but only if the side-windows are open. I probably could have found a way to get it to work with the windows closed as well, but not without using a few exceedingly rare parts and since we intend to build several of these that would be a bad idea. Most of the aircraft will sit stationary on the deck of the carrier anyway and pilots would normally keep the windows open until after take-off to make it easier for them to escape the aircraft in case of a ditching. I'm afraid Hood had to go. there are only so many 20ft ships you can have in your house The colour scheme is really the only realistic scheme I could make for aircraft serving in the Pacific. Early in the war they were greyish blue on top and light grey at the bottom. the only LEGo colour that comes close to the blue is sand blue. There are not enough parts in that colour and it's expensive. The later overall dark blue wasn't practical either, because there are very few hinges or inverted slopes in that colour. Lucky me that the compromise looks the most attractive. Cheers, Ralph

They do post upcoming events on their webpage. Indeed, it costs £12 per year to join but for that you do get a lot in return. A newsletter, the odd freebee now and then, and access to their website. One of the benefits of that is that whenever there's cheap LEGO to be had anywhere in the UK, you'll be one of the first people to know. If you want to look at it purely in financial terms, the savings I was able to make through that info alone were far more than the £12. There are also a few British bricklink sellers who give discounts to members of Brickish. It's great that eurboricks has an event now and then, but when it comes to getting together with LEGO builders in your country./state, joining a LUG is hard to beat. The only regret I have about joining Brickish is that I didn't do it sooner. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks everyone. Intrepid will actually be bigger than Malle Hawkings Nimitz class carrier. A Nimitz is larger than an Essex class carrier such as Intrepid, but Malle's carrier's scale is somewhat compressed. Ed is building Intrepid to a scale of 1/40, which will make her 22 ft long. Before you think we are boasting, he is no stranger to building large ships, as he built HMS Hood two years ago. I'm no stranger to building aircraft, of course, although building a few dozen is going to be challenging. I've kept the construction relatively simple and have used few really rare parts (Ed and I have plenty of trans clear macaroni bricks and jumper plates). The folding wings make things a bit more complicated, obviously, but were a bit of a necessity. Most pictures of US Navy WW-II carriers show a large number of planes with their wings folded. However, we also want to have the option of displaying aircraft with the wings spread, ready for take-off. Rather than making two versions of every aircraft (one with wings spread and one with wings folded) I decided to incorporate wing folding in all of them. They probably won't all have retractable undercarriages, though. On the Avenger it was relatively easy because they simply fold flat into the wings, but on the F4U and F6F the wheels also rotate whilst being retracted and the aircraft are quite a bit smaller. You can count on there being some Navy 'brass' on the bridge. Cheers, Ralph

Looks impressive so far. You've gone for an interesting combination of functional Technic elements, such as the steering and the suspension, and detailed looks for the engine, for example. I'm interested in the way you're building this. I normally don't build technic models. Most of my (non-minifig) cars are supposed to resemble a particular make and model of car, so I start with the outside first to get the look right and then I build the supporting structure and interior detail. Do you anticipate having to make a lot of changes to the underpinnings as you build the body to go with this or do you already have a fairly detailed idea of what it's going to look like and how you're going to build it and already take all that into account while building the chassis and interior? Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. This one wasn't particularly easy, but it would have been really hard hadn't I built rather a lot of aircraft in the past. Cheers, Ralph

My friend and regular collaborator Ed Diment (Lego Monster on flickr) has started work on building a minifig scale model of USS Intrepid, a WW-II US Navy aircraft carrier. He has asked me to design the aircraft for it. Ultimately we intend to build a few dozen aircraft spread over four different types: F4U Corsair and F6F Hellcat fighters, SB2C Helldiver dive-bomber and TBF/TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. As you can see from the title, this is a model of the Avenger. The Avenger was designed by the Famous Grumman Corporation shortly before the outbreak of WW-II and was produced in large numbers, first by Grumman (TBF Avenger), later by the Eastern Aircraft Division of general Motors (TBM Avenger). Wartime US Navy aircraft could be painted in a variety of colour schemes. From 1943 through to 1944 newly built aircraft destined for service in the Pacific theatre were painted in a three-colour camouflage scheme, with dark blue on top, white on the bottom and greyish blue in between. LEGO sand blue would undoubtedly be a better representation of the greyish blue, but because of the lack of hinges and the relative rareness of parts in that colour, I used regular blueish grey. Aircraft delivered from October 1944 were painted dark blue overall, but few older aircraft were repainted and tri-coloured aircraft served until the end of the war. In order for aircraft carriers to be able to carry a large number of Aircraft, Grumman designed the so-called "sto-wing", in which the wings folded aft. On the real aircraft this was done with a single hinge-line mounted at at angle. Leroy Grumman himself allegedly figured out the geometry using two erasers and a paper-clip! With LEGO I was forced to use two separate hinges. The wing rotates along it's length-axis and then the whole arrangement rotates aft using plate hinges. The Avenger was designed as a torpedo-bomber, with a large torpedo housed in an internal bomb bay. On the full-scale aircraft the bomb bay doors consist of two pieces -something that I couldn't manage on this scale. As always pictures are links and more pictures are on flickr. I hope to be building the other three in the coming two months. Cheers, Ralph

I answered part out for MOC building. That's my main reason for buying them in the first place. They are great parts packs. I did keep Cafe Corner in one piece for a few months and combined it with my own buildings, but Green Grocer and the Fire Brigade only lasted for about a month and my 2nd copy of Green grocer was parted out straight from the box. For me personally this hobby is all about building my own stuff. Cheers, Ralph

That is one ugly piece of megablocks! The picture he linked to was this one A civilian version of a HMMWV armament carrier/ slantback. Cheers, Ralph

The legs tend to suffer a bit in my experience. They'll never be quite as stiff as they used to be. Arms are a bit easier, although you indeed have to be careful not to crack the torso. LAML Radio had a video about how to remove them without cracking the torso a while ago. Cheers, Ralph

I agree with the other comments. I think orange suits a recovery vehicle, but this colour combination also works well. It's a nice truck. I don't think I've seen that bus before either. It's obviously based on the one that comes with the city corner set, but I love the modified colour scheme and the doors you added also look much more realistic Cheers, Ralph

As a child I was already firmly hooked on LEGO, but a friend of mine had quite a few Playmobil houses and I always liked their look. Your translation of the Playmobil design into my favourite toy worked out really well. Very nice Cheers, Ralph

8-wide indeed is too big for basic LEGO road plates. I know you chose a sloped back (I looked at the bricklink picture you linked to), but the slope you ended up with doesn't look right. It is much steeper on your model than on the real car. Compare the back of yours to the back of my 6-wide Hummer and you'll hopefully see what I mean. Cheers, Ralph

I like how you've upgraded the SUV from set 7635, in particular the opening bonnet (hood for those of us in the US) and details such as the spare tyre on the back. The doors with the red and yellow stripe also suit it IMO the vehicle doesn't look all that much like an actual Hummer. I too prefer my minifig scale Hummers to be six studs wide rather than 8 but in your case choosing six wide means that the SUV is wider than the Hummer and I don't think that is very realistic. Hummers are pretty wide and since the SUV is big too, having an 8-wide Hummer to go with it might be the better option. It should have a higher ground clearance (height from the ground to the bottom of the car), for instance, and the back doesn't look right to me. On the picture of the real vehicle on brickshelf you can see that the slope of the rear hatch is quite shallow. On yours it is much steeper. Many civilian Hummers have a straight rather than a sloped back, as you can see here Yellow suits it though and I like the roof rack . Cheers, Ralph

Sorry. I obviously should have read the message more carefully. I have to say, it strikes me as bit weird though. Why would somebody not be able to order on-line? No bank card? Under 18 perhaps. In that case you probably won't be able to order it via the telephone either.... Ralph

Since it's an exclusive, you're unlikely to find it outside of the Lego band stores (Milton Keynes, Bluewater or Brighton). Have you considered buying it from Lego online? It adds a few quid for the postage, but you won't have to travel or search for it. Cheers, Ralph

Sorry to hear about your family. I recently moved from the UK to The Netherlands with much of my LEGO collection. I don't have built-up sets, but I do have a lot of MOCs. Taking those apart and rebuilding them isn't really an option. I also take models on the road to public displays where it's important to be able to put things back together again quickly. Here's an example of part of my helicopter collection in the process of being packed for a show. If needed or convenient I take apart sections of a MOC, as you can see with the helicopter on the left. I usually take off the parts that stick out too much or that I know are very fragile (rotor blades in this case). I pack the models in boxes, usually quite tightly so that they can't slide around too much. After I took this photo I used paper towels and plastic shopping bags to fill in a lot of the space between the MOCs to keep them all in place. I have a fair few quite shallow boxes (the sort of boxes amazon ship boxes of LEGO in) so that I don't have to stack models on top of each other. If I do have to stack models I always try to have something soft between them, such as an old towel (obviously washed ). The models usually survive my journeys with very little damage, despite being quite fragile. The ones I unpacked from the UK so far were all in pretty good condition, despite an 8-hour journey by car over pretty crummy roads. Good luck with the move Cheers, Ralph

Building detailed models of real vehicles always takes a lot of parts and no matter how large your collection is, whenever you'll build something new you'll find that there is a particular part that you don't have enough of. At least that's my experience. I can understand that you have to draw the line somewhere. I can definitely recommend bricklink though. The price per part might be high (somewhat dependent on what it is), but you can buy the part you need in a much more focussed way. The pumper I referred to indeed was the one with the blue and white stripe. I feared the same thing you mentioned earlier, namely that the back would look a bit plain. The striping was my way to fix that. Anyway, I look forward to seeing the final version of your truck. I love fire trucks and this is a beauty. Cheers, Ralph

Let me start by telling you that this second version looks a lot more complete than the first and I already liked that one. It would be worth investing in a few more 1x1 tiles with a dial pattern, but your current compromise looks more than acceptable to me. I love the railings you added and the beefed-up basket. The various bits of equipment stored under the ladder also look pretty good to me. You could probably get away with adding one more axle, but it would mean a major rearrangement of the rear end of the truck and probably isn't worth while. It looks nicely proportioned as is. The scale really is a personal choice. 8-wide might be a bit big for my minifigs according to my personal taste, but I think the truck looks good and I wouldn't mess with it. I think it would be hard to have the same functionality on a smaller vehicle, although I am tempted to have a go. I wouldn't mind having a ladder truck to accompany my own minifig scale US pumper. That the headlights might seem a bit big compared to the size of the truck doesn't strike me as much of a problem. It is one of those compromises you'll always run into when building an approximate scale model out of LEGO. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks Kevin. I agree that some disruptive camouflage would make it look more interesting than just tan overall. However, it's based on a real-world US Army vehicle and they use one of two camouflage schemes: this desert scheme with tan overall and a disruptive scheme consisting of brown, black and dark olive green. Here's a tan one: I would have preferred to build it in the disruptive scheme, but recreating it in LEGO is tricky. Dark green is a reasonable approximation of the olive green, but the selection of parts available in that colour is very limited and so are my supplies I intend to use some of the dark green that I currently don't have tied up in MOcs I don't want to part with for an armoured vehicle sometime soon in disruptive camouflage. Cheers, Ralph

You're welcome. For me building a LEGO car usually starts with finding the right wheel. I'd love to have some of the ones you linked to in black. I could do with a few more greay ones, too actually. I think I have two of them right now. Have you considered the older style model team wheels? Even though they were never available in sets, some of them are for sale on bricklink (I happen to have bought two of them only last week). With the matching tyre they'll give you the same diameter. BTW, I realise that I completely forgot to compliment you on the actual MOC. It looks suitably ratty and has some really neat details such as the little teeth under the radiator. Cheers, Ralph

Width of minifig vehicles is a regularly reoccurring topic of conversation. American fire engines can be very big, particularly this type (combining functions of a pumper and a ladder truck), but they're not wider than a regular truck. I personally feel that 8 wide is already a bit too big for minifig scale vehicles and making it even wider would mean that it would completely dwarf any figure standing next to it. Of course making it bigger means that it becomes progressively easier to add details (part of the reason why most of my fire-engines are 14 studs wide and why I don't include minifigs). I'm not sure whether I'd see that as a weakness. On many of these trucks the cab does have a lot of little bells and whistles while the rest of the body is a bit simple. If you do want to add more stuff to the back, I'd suggest adding a few lights to the top of the body (a few floodlights and a few rotating lights) and perhaps some handrails. It's on a larger scale and but you can see the sort of things I mean on my the back of my FDNY fire engine. I look forward to seeing the finished product. Cheers, Ralph

Same for me. I used to cut out the front covers and keep them instead of the whole box, but even that stack got out of hand and chucked all of them (including a fair few from back in the 'eighties) figuring I'd never ever do anything with any of them. I haven't quite brought myself to doing the same with my instructions, as I expect to be moving to a larger apartment in a few months time Cheers, Ralph

The yellow headlights are definitely an improvement. I can understand the issue with the tyres. the ones with a fairly large diameter tend to also be very wide. There is an alternative to the front wheels you've used on this one though. I took a picture of some of the different tyre sizes LEGO makes a while ago. If I'm not mistaken, the type you've used in the front is shown on the bottom row, 2nd from left. The one above it in the picture (bricklink) has the same diameter, but is narrower. You can get similarly styled rims for the wider tyres as well (bricklink) (not shown in my picture) so that you can have matching rims on the front and rear wheels. Cheers, Ralph