Ralph_S

I don't know. Doesn't that depend on your bank? Is it legally not possible to get a credit card if you're younger than 18 no matter where you are? Cheers, Ralph

Seriously, I suspect it's because of the price. They might want to have some confirmation that whoever is buying a £355 LEGO set isn't some kid using his or her parents' credit card. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks to all of you. The world speed record (roughly 400 km/h) for conventional helicopters is held by a modified Lynx AH1. Technically that was an army version. Without wanting to get too technical, one of the factors limiting the forward speed of a helicopter is a condition known as retreating blade stall. The weird paddle-shaped ends on the rotor blades were designed to delay this from happening. The record-braking machine was one of the test aircraft for this type of blade, so it's fair to say it worked! Since then the blades have been (retro-)fitted to many more Lynxes, including the Dutch Navy ones. I'm not sure they can do 400 km/h, but they're probably quite fast. It's funny that you should mention this classic song by Dorus. I recently saw it on <a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH8OBeNaCmE>youtube</a>. A few words of warning: once you get it into your head, it's almost impossible to get it out again! I always felt that the real helicopters were quite attractive looking, with the contrast between the greys and the colourful roundel. I built it out of dark bley and old grey by the way. Being able to reach this level of detail is one of the reasons for building it bigger than most of my other helicopter models. The Lynx is a fairly small helicopter and I feared I couldn't do it justice on a smaller scale. Trying to recreate a non squarish shape with rectangular bricks is, of course, a major part of the fun. edit: They are probably slightly too green, but the windows are tinted and I quite liked a little splash of colour. Call it artistic license Thanks guys. Ralph

Thanks for all the comments. I appreciate them. I wasn't sure whether I'd post this under 'other themes' because it is military or under 'model team'. That theme had some excellent helicopters in it too and was a great influence on my building style in general. It's not a Technic model, but it obviously uses some Technic elements to make things work. The various markings are so important for the look of the real machine that I felt I had to add them. Unfortunately I saw no purist solution to make them happen. For a long time I made stickers for my models by hand, but in the last months I've been using a computer graphics program and an inkjet printer. It gives them a more coherent and slightly neater look than I could manage with pens and paper. Adding folding rotor blades and a folding tail was comparatively easy and something I've done before. The effect always looks pretty dramatic, which is a plus. It also means that I can easily fit it on a shelf Cheers, Ralph

First of all, I don't think that the Fire Brigade looks older. I think it looks much more American than Green grocer or Cafe Corner. The latter two remind me much more of European cities such as Paris or Brussels. Then again, I have read comments from Americans that they resemble buildings you could find in older city centres. I took them apart a few weeks ago, but I had Green Grocer and the Fire Brigade sit side-by-side for a while and they looked fine. OK, now to the more important point, which basically boils down to whether or not they look good together with creator sets and other city sets. I think that they don't look good directly side-by-side, because the Cafe Corner buildings are bigger and much more ornate than regular city sets. I quite like the design of City Corner, but the buildings are tiny. What could work IMO is if you have the cafe corner buildings grouped together form the part of a city centre, with the other sets representing a more suburban part of town. Cheers, Ralph

The thought of not being able to bring myself to take apart figures made me laugh out loud. It's a construction toy. In my view it is supposed to be taken apart and built into something else. I rarely build the sets I buy in the first place. I part out most of them straight from the box. I sometimes do feel a twinge of sadness when I take the sets that I do built apart (cafe corner, for instance), but this is usually forgotten once I get my hands on the parts and make something myself. Of course, everybody is free to enjoy their hobby the way see fit. I also know people who rarely build things, but who mainly enjoy the process of sorting the parts. I'm not kidding! This tread just goes to show that you get LEGO fans in all sorts Cheers, Ralph

In recent months I've been building more and more models with a Dutch theme. You may have seen some of them in the model team forum. For little more than a week I've been working on the latest MOC, a Royal Netherlands Navy SH-14D Lynx helicopter. This type of helicopter is used for anti-submarine warfare, for supporting the Royal Dutch Marines and for Search-And-Rescue above the North Sea. The helicopter was designed to operate from the small landing decks aboard frigates and in order to store it inside the hangars aboard ships, it has folding rotors and a folding tail, as does my model. The model has a few more working features, such as opening cockpit doors, opening sliding doors in the side and a rescue winch that can be extended from the cabin. It is built to the same scale as most of my larger cars (1/22), which makes it larger than my other aircraft and helicopter models. As usual more pictures can be found on flickr. Cheers, Ralph

Some of those minifig parts indeed are used rather often. However, LEGO keep bringing out new designs and compared to the torsos that were available back when I was a child today's choice is overwhelming . If I don't like the ones I get in sets, there are plenty of others that can buy from bricklink. Cheers, Ralph

I too had this set as a child and bought another 2nd hand copy not too long ago. It's probably one of the best classic cars with a four-wide body they made. Looking back at that 1988 catalogue I'd have to say that most city sets back then were brilliant. The parts I loved most were the tyres. There weren't many sets back then where you'd get 8 of those for as little money. I love the pictures where you can see it crushing cars BTW. Cheers, Ralph

Building an alternate model in some respect is what LEGO is all about. the whole strength of the material is that you can make different things with the same elements. It's probably part of the reason why I really like creator sets. They go back to what I'd see as LEGO's roots. However, I know LEGO had a lot of trouble with alternate models shown merely on the box and not in the instructions. While I personally liked the challenge of recreating a particular model using just a few pictures (I used to occasionally do that as a child), for a lot of (young) builders it was frustrating and lead to their parents being dissatisfied with the product and even complaining to LEGO. As far as I know that is the reason why they stopped putting pictures of alternate models in the instruction booklets/ on the boxes. I myself rarely build anything following instructions (I'd rather build my own stuff) but if there are alternate models in a set, instructions for them are a necessity. Cheers, Ralph

Your bad luck for people being thoughtful. Rather than saying I like n-wide, a lot of people seem to realise that the width depends on what you want your train to do and fit with . Cheers, Ralph

Good that you got the pictures to work, but they don;t link back to flickr. From the Flickr Community guidelines "Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere. The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr." If you don't adhere to the guidelines, they may shut down your account and simply deeplinking to a picture isn't enough. Ignore this at your own peril. :skull: If we want to make this into a tutorial we'd better make sure we get it right! Cheers, Ralph

One more thing: according to flick if you post a photograph on flickr elsewhere, the picture should be a link. Using the board's method doesn't actually do that. Instead you can type code directly, which is what I always do: [url=link to photo page][img=link to actual picture][/url] Where the link to the photo page is just that and where the link to the actual picture is the deeplink for the medium size picture you find using ricecracker's method and that ends with .jpg Cheers, Ralph

Interesting topic so far. A few comments: AFAIK trains tend to be slightly wider than most trucks (roughly 2.7m vs 2.4m), which is why my 7-wide trucks and 8-wide train go together. If you start moving towards smaller scales the difference becomes so small you might as well use 6-wide trucks and 6-wide trains together. LEGO have produced the 'flexible' train track , which as Ashi Valkoinen mentions allows larger radius curves. If I wanted my train to run on a track, buying a load of those would be the only serious option. It doesn't work with 12V or 9V though, so it would have to be powered with Power Functions (or perhaps an old 4.5V motor). If you want to use 9V or 12V you're stuck with the smaller radius curves and consequently 8-wide will look awkward in a curve. I suppose 7-wide is a compromise, but it obviously complicates the build quite a bit. It can be done, of course and I build a lot of odd-wide stuff myself and have gotten very much used to it, but I wouldn't necessarily want to do it for a train. Cheers, Ralph

The two car bases are a quick fix to provide enough space for the minifigs, but there gaps in the bottom do look awkward. I'd also suggest, as somebody else has mentioned, making the front a bit more different from the back. You could do it by placing the windshield back one stud or by replacing the aft window with a 2x2 45 degree transparent slope with 1x2 45 degree slopes in yellow next to it, to give the car proper c-pillars. I understand you like yellow, but it's a pretty weird colour for a stretched limo that is used for anything other than a hen party. It would look better in white, black or dark grey IMO. I do like that you;ve made it such that the wheels don't stick out of the fenders. Cheers, Ralph

I'm not much of a train builder myself. That does mean I had pretty much the same question you had when I did decide to build one. What width am I going to give it? I was going to build a Diesel train though, so I'll skip your pantograph question To me six wide seems pretty narrow and I think trains ought to be wider than the track (excl. the sleepers). I also take minifig scale to be pretty close to 1/45. Consequently I chose to build my train 8 studs wide and the carriages ended up being 59 studs long. However, the only reason why I felt I could get away with it is that I never had the intention of running my train on a layout. You see, here's the thing: an 8-wide train with 59 stud long carriages running on standard LEGO track will look utterly ridiculous going through curves, because the radius of the curves you can make with standard LEGO rails is far too small in comparison to the length of the carriages. You can try to alternate curve pieces with straight tracks, but that doesn't exactly give you a nice smooth curve overall. If you want to run your train on a layout you'll have to fiddle around with the proportions and the overall size. The carriages have to be a lot shorter to take the turns properly and the only way of doing that whilst keeping the whole thing more-or-less in proportion is to make the whole thing narrower. Even then, LEGO trains often look a bit compressed. So, the answer to your question depends on what you want your train to do. If you, like I did, want it to look realistic and you don't want to run it on a layout, 8 studs is probably the best option. If you want it to run on a layout, you'll have to compromise and will need to go for a narrower train. Cheers, Ralph

There's a common misconception about what SNOT means (or perhaps I don't understand it myself ) SNOT does not mean that you can't see the studs. Slapping tiles over your studs isn't SNOT. As far as I understand it any type of construction in which the tops of the bricks point in any direction other than up is an example of SNOT, irrespective of whether or not you can see the actual studs. I do a lot of SNOT building, but I do tend to have studs on my models. An example: my Sea Knight helicopter. Studs on top, but full of SNOT building, in particular for the sides of the fuselage. It's largely a conscious choice. No matter how realistic I may try to make my models, I prefer to show that they are made out of LEGO. A second reason is that for me the shape is far more important than the texture and by combining studs and tiles you can actual make a shape look more accurate. For instance, if you have a surface with studs but an edge of tiles around it it makes the surface look slightly curved. It's a technique they use quite frequently in LEGOLand (for vehicles in particular) and one that I use quite regularly too. Check out the roof on my Jaguar, for instance. (I hope I can be forgiven for adding pictures of my MOCs to many of my posts. It's not because I want to 'pimp' my models, but because it's often far more easy to explain what I mean by showing a picture than by trying to describe it with words. ) I admire some of the studless building people do, but it isn't for me. I've also seen plenty of MOCs hat were studless (because it supposedly is more realistic), but that were rubbish regardless. Cheers, Ralph

I love trucks like this and you've done an excellent job on building this one. It looks very convincing Cheers, Ralph

Very nice I saw this on brickshelf a little while ago and I liked it straight away. I did suspect it had been inspired by my police van, which has now been confirmed. Nice to see that my designs are appreciated in Hong Kong. The way you integrated the front window is really clever. I can imagine that that must have taken a bit of fiddling. In my opinion the width is just about perfect for a vehicle like this. I take minifig scale to be approximately 1/45 (scaled with the height of the figures). A real Mercedes Sprinter is 1.9m wide, which at 1/45 is very close to five studs. Cheers, Ralph

I have the older four-engined jet. I didn't like the set when it first came out, but then I was able to get my hands on one cheaply and couldn't resist. I was pleasantly surprised. It was far better than I imagined. Sure, the huge pre-molded parts are a bit limiting, but it was one of the most realistic jets LEGO had ever built. Yes, it was big, but so is a real airliner. The jet in this set obviously looks similar, albeit smaller. Four engines would be too much. Most modern airliners have two engines rather than four, except for the really big ones. The terminal building captures the look of a real airport quite nicely. Of course it would be nicer if it were bigger, but this is a toy mostly aimed at kids after all, so they have to keep the price under control. If we as AFOLs want a bigger terminal we can always build it ourselves. Not a bad set IMO. Cheers, Ralph

I like it, but it doesn't really look like a BMW to me too. In fact, making a car this small look like anything in particular is a chore. S you wrote, you based the front on one of my cars. With mine I was going for an American musclecar look and somehow yours looks more like, say, a Camaro than a BMW, certainly with the racing stripe. Nice colour combo BTW. The stripe down the middle really shows a nice perk of going for five-wide. I don't want to push you towards building an outright copy of my car, but I do have a few pointers. It's hard not to make a small car like this look 'blocky' because the size of the parts is large compared to the size of the vehicle, but you can smooth things a bit by using a combination of plates and tiles. For instance, replacing some of the plates with tiles, in particular at the edges, would make it look smoother. I don't really like the flat expanse behind the driver. On my car I added a little hump to suggest a folded convertible roof. What you could do would be to add two black cheese slopes on top of the 1x4 black plates to suggest headrest or a tonneau cover. I'm not sure the click hinges work on this one. When I use them I tend to attach them using a half-stud offset. You can't do that on this car, obviously, because they'd interrupt the yellow stripe running down the centre. I couldn't do it on my car either, which is why i chose cheese slopes instead. IMO they also look a bit more sporty. Cheers, Ralph

I understand where you're coming from. You're not the first person I know who started building a few cars (in his case after building lots of space ships) and who found it challenging. One of the ways to make this sort of thing more interesting without adding seemingly random bits to it is by taking a good look at a lot of different types of cars. Trucks like this, with a flat bed and the wooden frames alongside it often have bits of the chassis visible. One of my first attempts at a minifig scale vehicle -after a 20 year hiatus- was a farm truck not all that dissimilar to this one. I built it about two years ago and there are a few things that I might do differently if I were to build a similar vehicle now, but overall I'm still quite happy with the look. Anyway, whilst figuring out what to build one of the things I noticed about this sort of truck is that behind the cab and underneath the bed you can actually see the vehicle's chassis. I think that this by itself, and the rear mudguards and the inverted slopes I used to give the impression of extra supports for the bed give it a few interesting points without me having to resort to adding random bits. The challenge in building a minifig car isn't in adding lots of detail, it's in getting the shape right and in adding just enough detail to make it look convincing. This sort of thing looks easy, but it really isn't unless you've done it a lot. I'm already looking forward to your next civilian vehicle Cheers, Ralph

I like a lot of the stuff you do, but I'm not convinced by this. It doesn't really look all that much like a real truck. The front overhang seems much too long. The whole thing looks a bit too long, actually. What bothers me most about it though is that it seems as though you've greebled it. There are too many bits stuck on the sides of it that serve no identifiable purpose. Superficially it may make the truck look detailed, but I find the little bits very distracting. Greebles look fine on a space ship or other science fiction creation or perhaps on some post-apocalyptic model, but IMO not on a car for a LEGO city. There are some elements I do like about it, such as the 'wood' on the sides of the loadbed. Sorry. Ralph

Custom minifigs generally aren't really my thing, but I like Mythbusters a lot and these look instantly recognisable. It's great how you've managed to capture their likeness using (mainly) official parts. Very nice Ralph

Thanks Mark. I have displayed my aircraft models to the public on a number of occasions. I'm a member of The Brickish Association and through them I've been to a number of different events. The reaction is always great. People who build with LEGO always seem to appreciate them (or even know them or me from having seen them on the internet). In some respects taking them to non-LEGO events is even more fun. Last year I had a few models on display at a large model building event in Brighton for model railways, airplanes, cars, RC tanks that sort of stuff. Brickish had a display for which I took some of my jets among other thinsg. Some people who saw them there were amazed that they were actually LEGO . Welcome to Eurobricks BTW. Cheers, Ralph