Ralph_S

Very nice. What makes it look like an old truck is the shape and detail of the cab. It certainly doesn't look like a modern one. 7-wide too. I like it a lot. Cheers, Ralph

I agree that most stores in the UK don't seem to have a lot of LEGO. Where I live we do have a John Lewis and they tend to have quite a few sets. Toys r Us usually isn't all that bad either. If you're in Surrey, both the big shop in Legoland Windsor and the Lego Store in Bluewater aren't all that far away either. I actually buy most of my Lego on-line nowadays, through shop@home and amazon. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. The colour was really determined by the original classic space sets. Ground vehicles were initially old grey with trans yellow transparencies (if any). Since the original sets always had red wheel hubs, most people who build neo classic space vehicles tend to use red for the wheels as well. It might not make any logical sense perhaps, but it does help emphasise the link with the original classic space sets. Congratulations on your 100th post, BTW Thanks. I always liked what other people were doing with it, but I was always a bit reluctant to participate myself. I don't normally build sci-fi or even vehicles of my own design. This was like jumping into the pool at the deep end in a sense, so I'm quite pleased with the reception that it got. Cheers, Ralph

Little nit-pick: I don't think it conforms to the modular buildings standard, which makes it hard to combine with sets such as the green grocer and cafe corner. Other than that I love it. It's nice and bright, has got lots of nice features such as the ivy growing up the walls and it has a great interior. Very nice. Cheers, Ralph

That it seemed as though it was going to go under two years ago should have been a wake-up call for everyone. I still upload things to brickshelf because I know that there are a lot of people who still browse it (as do I occasionally), but I've been diligently keeping backups and I upload all of my newer stuff to flickr. Cheers, Ralph

Between 1979 and 1987 LEGO produced a range of space sets that AFOLs often refer to as Classic Space. Peter Reid, a friend of mine and fellow member of Brickish is a big classic space fan and about a year ago started building models inspired by the old sets, but using newer parts and building techniques. Within Brickish we started calling it Neo Classic Space. Because this year it's been thirty years since the sets were first releaased, he and James Shields have set up a website devoted to it and that's what this model is for. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. Peter Reid's ships are on an intirely different level. As far as I am concerned, he pretty much invented neo classic space. I liked Ed's idea of a ground vehilce, because ground vehicles tended to be the classic space sets that I liked the most. I also liked the challenge of building it with PF control, although during the actual build I felt like it was never going to work and we'd better give up on it. Ed and I built the lab section at my place in a single evening just before the deadline. It is a true collaborative effort. We had a lot of fun building the interior. Cheers, Ralph

Following Captain Kirk's example, I've decided to post my entry for the Neo-classic space project. I'm not a space builder by any means, but my friends Peter Reid (Legoloverman on Flickr) has been trying to persuade me for a while and when James Shields (lostcarpark on flickr) set up the neo-classic space website and contacted builders, including me, to build a neo classic space MOC for every day of the month March, I couldn't resist any longer. Ed Diment (Lego Monster on flickr), one of the other builders who was invited, is a good friend of mine. His initial idea was to build a large wheeled vehicle with power functions remote control, but he was not at all happy with his first attempts. On a visit, I drew a quick sketch of a six-wheeled vehicle that could carry a base module, inspired by classic sets such as the All terrain vehicle and the Mobile Rocket Transport as well as mining equipment. Ed and I agreed that I would take over the design and building of the vehicle, but obviously with his input. I had a bit of experience with building vehicles with power functions remote control after I built my FDNY fire engine, but this vehicle was tricky. Combining steering and drive on the front wheels proved difficult and it took a while to sort out the gearing for the drive. The biggest problem was getting the steering to work properly, probably because of the size of the wheels. Initially we used a worm gear and a technic torque gear in a set-up similar to that on my fire engine, but depending on the gearing, the steering was either too slow or the torque gear kept slipping. The torque gear was required to prevent the steering mechanism from wrecking itself when it hit a stop. The idea of using the spring came up in a discussion on the brickish website a while ago, but I can't remember who came up with it. We tried that next, but at first it didn't work very well. When the vehicle was sitting on the ground, the spring wasn't strong enough to centre the wheels. Part of the solution involved changing and firming up the steering geometry. It now drives reasonably well, although after a few sudden turns the front wheels start to splay a bit. The vehicle got its name from one of the first versions, which moved forward in an odd lurching motion. Since other builders who have been doing classic space -most notably Peter- have defined a certain style of building (old grey, blue and trans yellow like the first classic space sets, and fairly heavily greebled and largely studless) I temporarily gave up my reluctance to build studless. Anyway, enough talk. Let's look at some pictures: a very short movie of the L.U.R.C.H. in action L.U.R.C.H. photo set on flickr It certainly was a rather different build than those I normally do, but great fun. I hope you'll like it. Cheers, Ralph

Look, I'm sorry if I came across as being irate. Perhaps I underestimate how difficult dealing with scales is, because I've been building scale models and doing this sort of calculations for ages. In any case, I hope it is clear now. Cheers, Ralph

Trust me, if I would have been angry you would have gotten a very different reply than the one I wrote. If you would have put even a tiny amount of effort into it you could have answered your initial question yourself and I really don't understand why you didn't. Cheers, Ralph

If you think that 1/16 scale people look small, why did you even bring up 1/35? They are less than half the size of 1/16 scaled people! This sort of thing really isn't rocket science. I hope you agree with me that a 1/16 scale tank should have 1/16 scaled people. If the 1/16 figure looks small next to the 1/16 scale tank model, it's probably because you don't really have a feel for how large a tank actually is. The Tiger was one of the bigger ones of its era. Of course, we can check whether the dimensions of the model tank and of the 120mm figure actually correspond to a scale of 1/16. I've found the dimensions of a Tiger I tank on wikipedia: length 8.45m width 3.55m height 3m I'm sticking to the metric system here, because I can't stand feet and inches. Scaled 1/16 the dimensions of the model are (rounded to whole centimeters): length 53 cm width 22 cm height 19 cm. This corresponds fairly well to 21, 9, and 8 inches, respectively. So, whoever made the tank model can indeed divide by 16! Now let's take your figure. It's 120mm tall. If it is scaled 1/16 that length corresponds too a real person of 1.92m (6ft and a few inches, I can't be bothered to calculate it), which sounds reasonable to me. Satisfied? Cheers, Ralph

It might be that I don't understand your question properly, but haven't you already answered it yourself? If you buy a 1/16 scale tank, you'd need 1/16 scale troops. DUH! Cheers, Ralph

I have both Market Street and the VW Beetle, and in both the colour isn't completely consistent. The Beetle has a number of large dark blue plates in the roof and they look lighter than the other parts. It's not too bad, but could be better. Cheers, Ralph

It's always sad to read stories such as Melbourne Pirate's. My parents always supported my endeavours, even if they may have had some doubts about some of them LEGO certainly was no exception. Sure, when you're a teenager you want to be one of the 'cool people' and since LEGO is generally not cool by their standards, it's not the sort of thing you talk openly about with classmates in secondary school. I didn't talk about it either. My LEGO building was a private thing, shared with my family and a number of good friends. I never had a 'dark age' and I never stopped building. I've always found it a very good way to relax and to be creative. My LEGO building still is a somewhat private thing, in the sense that I don't openly advertise it at work, but my non LEGO-building friends all know about it and some co-workers do. It's not private in the sense that anybody who'll ever type my name into a search engine will see various LEGO things. I only very rarely get unpleasant reactions. I told one of my co-workers who asked me what my plans were for the weekend that I was going to attend a LEGO event. He made some lame remark about it being a kids toy. In reply I showed him an on-line picture of one of my models. He was stunned. Generally when people find out about it they're interested. That may have to do with my line of work, because almost everybody around me used to build with LEGO when they were children/teenagers (I work in an aeronautical engineering department of a university). Cheers, Ralph

In the same vein you 'stole' their idea. After all, the cab of your truck is pretty much identical to LEGO city trucks from 2005/.2006 Cheers, Ralph

When I was a child I had black, grey, white, blue, red and yellow. That was it. The only green I had was Duplo. It's fantastic that there are all these colours now and I pretty much like all of them. Browns and tans and dark orange make for much more realistic buildings and the various greys are great for my military building. I like pretty much all of them, but I have a particular soft spot for sand blue. The only colour that I have a problem with is pink. It is not because it's a "girl's colour" or because I find pink particularly hideous. It is because LEGO seems to have too many different shades of pink that are so subtly different that you really only see the difference when you hold two parts next to each other. Consequently, I have not yet been able to gather enough pink parts to be able to build anything with them (such as a pink Cadillac). Cheers, Ralph

I suppose there is a big difference between building a model of the real craft and building something that sort-of looks like it and which has a lot of play features. The latter seems to be what you're going for, whereas I would go for the former. I always try to make my models as accurate as I can, but because of this they do tend to be fragile. So from my point of view the wing doesn't look quite right, but I realise that it probably is sturdier this way. Cheers, Ralph

The real V-22's fuselage has an almost square cross-section its wings have a constant chord length and only a slight forward angle. Rear access to the cab is via a tail-mounted ramp. Your model doesn't have any of that and consequently IMO it doesn't look like a V-22. I realise you haven't yet added tailfins, but I wonder what you'll do for the engines. The Osprey has very large engine pods at the end of its wing with three-bladed props. Your aircraft doesn't seem to have any engines. All you've got are two-bladed props that are attached to an awkward-looking hinge. I think there's very little you can do to actually make it look like one using the large fuselage pieces and the wing piece. My suggestion would be to either give up on the idea that you're building a V-22 and just go for a generic tilt-rotor aircraft of your own design or to build a proper V-22 by replacing the large aircraft pieces by old-fashioned brick and plate to give it a wing and a fuselage that actually look like those on a V-22. Cheers, Ralph

Do they really? I don't know where you live, but I've displayed models at a number of events in the UK during the last two years, including very crowded ones, and nothing I took has ever been stolen. Things might need a little repair now and then, but that's it. It's usually the adults who try to repair something their children broke who do most of the damage Cheers, Ralph

I agree. It's a bit too black for my tastes. You could make the front bumper and the rear-view mirrors grey and build the radiator out of silver grille tiles. That will brighten it right up. The tractor could also use a few more details such steps to help the driver climb aboard. Right now there seems to be rather a lot of space between the bottom of the door and the top of the front wheel well. That's a perfect spot for a little step to go into. I do think that calling it minifig scale is stretching the definition a wee bit far (although the LEGO Agents truck and the Scuderia Ferrari set are even bigger). On the plus side, the relative proportions are pretty good, the trailer looks nicely detailed and I love the chrome exhaust pipes. I could do with a few more of those parts myself Cheers, Ralph

If you quote me, quote me correctly: "The most important thing is that you do things you like to do, whether that is building with LEGO, playing a game on your PS3 or snogging your GF." Very much on topic. Ralph

It's inevitable that you'll enthusiastic children running around at a LEGO exhibit. I mean, let's be honest; imagine yourself being 7 years old again and faced with such LEGO goodness. Wouldn't you be excited? I would be. Heck, I was. I remember going to a event organised by the Lego group, called 'The LEGO World Show' sometime in the early 'eighties when I was still a child. I must have been running around too. I've been in touch with the guy who built railway station and the buses. He has based their design on my bus, and we exchanged some information. It's really neat that they were on display in Canada. His name is Tim Tosino, and he is on flickr , where he has numerous pictures of the bus and of other models on display during the event. Cheers, Ralph

To call spending more time doing other things than building with your LEGO a 'dark age' seems a bit dramatic to me. If what you are having is a dark age, I would have had dozens of dark ages in the last 30 years. I'll list a few criteria that I think are necessary to call a period of your life a LEGO dark age: 1) You give up buying and building for at least a few years 2) All the LEGO that you do have is stored away, sold or donated to a relative 3) After a few years you rediscover the fun of LEGO, and start buying or building again. If your old collection is sitting in the attic, you dig it out. IMO it's not a proper dark age unless there is light at the other end of the tunnel! I call these the 3 d's, for duration, disposal and discovery In what you write none of these criteria is met. The most important thing is that you do things you like to do, whether that is building with LEGO, playing a game on your PS3 or snogging your GF (for those of you objecting to the use of the word snogging, I have to point out that this forum is supposed to be 18+). Cheers, Ralph

I don't think that is all that great actually. It's mainly large and you have to admire the builder that, but while it looks detailed, quite a few of the details are actually wrong and don't get me started on talking about the aircraft. I don't know quite how accurate the model of QM2 is, but it looks very nice. I think that any discussion on 'what is the best MOC ?' is futile, because how do you define what the best is. If the best for you means biggest, I suppose the QE2 qualifies. If the best means the one that is most viewed on brickshelf, it would be the carrier. If you want a large ship that is accurate and that was actually built with bricks owned by the builder (unlike the QM2), Ed Diment's Hood undoubtedly qualifies, as does Yamato (provided it does get finished). Cheers, Ralph

I built a bus a few months ago, with opening doors. Perhaps its doors are suitable for your trolley bus as well. Cheers, Ralph