Ralph_S

I'm not completely sold on the helicopter, to be brutally honest. I've built quite a few helicopters and, having toyed with the idea of building a Chinook and having built a http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/tags/seaknight/, I'm quite familiar with tandem rotor helicopter. I don't know of any operationally used tandem helicopter that didn't have at least three rotor blades on each mast. Two blades looks very odd. I like that you haven't forgotten that a helicopter should have engines -unlike quite a few fictional helicopters that I've seen-, but the ones next to the front pylon (just aft of the cockpit) look very much out of place. Once again, real tandem helicopters tend to have them mounted only at the tail end and the front rotor is driven by a shaft that runs along the top of the cabin. I know transport helicopters often are quite boxy, but this would look a lot better if the fuselage cross-section would be a little rounder, by using slopes at the top corners and inverted slopes at the bottom ones. It would look better if the bits that you attach the nosegear too wouldn't be stuck on the bottom of the plate, but if they'd be mounted invisible above it, with the strut sticking through a hole in the bottom. That would solve the pretty extreme nose-up attitude. It's not uncommon for this type of helicopter to have their noses sticking up a bit. The camouflage looks a little messy, as MacK has also pointed out. Finally, I'd loose the transparent elements on the tips of the aft rotor blades. They are distracting and real helicopters don't have them. I hope you don't take it badly. If I didn't think it had potential to be quite good, I wouldn't have written anything. Cheers, Ralph

No need to be humbled. I'm just another guy who builds with LEGO. I look forward to seeing the result. Cheers, Ralph

I really like 7-wide trucks and this one is no exception. The size simply looks right next to cafe-corner compatible buildings, minifigs and many other LEGO city vehicles such as the cement truck. I don't really like the mudguards on the rear wheels and how you tapered the sides of the truck to get them to fit. I think the solution that I used on my 7-wide fire engine would work for you too. Cheers, Ralph

That's a blast from the past! A thread from three years ago is resurrected. I joined Eurobricks about three years ago and this thread was probably one of the first I started. I did check in from time to time, but haven't been a very active member. My collection of aircraft has grown quite a bit since then. I think I used to have five aircraft back in 2005. Now my collection numbers 28 aircraft and helicopters. I still haven't built an SR-71 though :) I'm no longer updating my pages on MOCpages because I got fed up with it. I've moved to flickr and am much happier there. I also still update my folders on brickshelf. Cheers, Ralph

I bought my 10187 just last weekend and completed it today. Making a convertible out of it seems like a very obvious thing to do, as I've mentioned a few times in various circumstances (on LAML radio, for instance). There's something funny about the roof and the engine cover on the set and turning it into a convertible solves the first and obscures the second issue. That said, looking at the finished model, I have to say that it looks better in the brick than it does on most of the photographs that I've seen of it. I'm tempted to tinker with it a bit (make it into a convertible myself or make the roof rounder, add a chrome strip to the sides), but I'm more tempted to take it apart and use all that lovely dark blue for something else. I wasn't aware that it is placed in the creator line. That doesn't make sense at all. Cheers, Ralph

It is a very useful technique and it's always good to show it again to people who otherwise would never have thought about it themselves. Cheers, Ralph

I've been doing this for ages and am sure wasn't the first either. It is an example of what I know as SNARL: Studs Not At Right Angles. Lowlug have a number of techniques in their online techniques library, including the one based on pythagorean triplets: http://www.lowlug.nl/index.php?option=com_...8&Itemid=52 (with contributions by fellow Brickish members Jason Railton and Mark Palmer) I don't use it for walls but use it to mount wings: BTW, the pylons under the wings use the variant of 3-4-5 using a jumper plate to get 1.5-2-2.5 such that they are aligned with the fuselage. Cheers, Ralph

Nice topic. There's a picture of me taken a few months before I turned three holding a green Duplo brick up to the camera, so it's fair to say I already was playing with Lego at that age. I can narrow down the date at which the photograph was taken to within a few days, because it was taken when we were celebrating my older sister's birthday. I don't really know when it started, but my older sister had Duplo before I did, so I reckon I got to know LEGO through her. I'm also pretty sure that my parents bought it for us. What attracted me to it then and what I think is the greatest thing about LEGO is that you can pretty much make whatever you like with it. Cheers, Ralph

I know you were one of the people who said we should wait and you weren't comparing. Ed is not aiming for a world record. What he wants is an accurate scale model of HMS Hood built in LEGO. We've talked about the numbers of parts he's used, but he's given up counting. A real Nimitz class carrier indeed carries 5000 crewmembers and its length is about 330m. (I doubt Malle's model had 5000 minifigs on it, BTW). Hood was 262 m long and carried roughly 1400 crew members, so the real ship was smaller. However, Malle's ship was built to a much smaller scale than Ed's (roughly 1/43) , which makes the model of Hood about 6.1 m long. In case people can't quite judge how long that is: it's longer than, say, a Mercedes S-class. Carriers are far wider than battlecruisers, and despite the difference in scale it'll be narrower than the carrier at about 74 cm wide. I'm glad you like the Swordfish. Pretty much every brickish member that I know who will be attending is getting really excited about this event and we're all pulling out all the stops. Cheers, Ralph

I think you guys ought to wait for the Hood to be finished before making any judgements on which is the better model, if any. The Yamato is absolutely fantastic, but after six years would appear to still not be finished. You'll have to admire the builder's dedication. I tend to get fed up with things that I don't complete within six weeks. I've seen the Hood today, because the builder happens to be a good friend of mine. It's not quite finished yet, but I helped him put the funnels (smoke stacks) on it, all the guns, all the boats and the mast to see whether all of them would fit and to have a look at where it is going. He aims to finish it before Saturday, when it's due to go on display at the Great Western Lego show in Swindon in the UK. It is simply stunning and photographs don't quite do the size of it justice. All due respect for Malle Hawking (the builder of the aircraft carrier) and Lindsey Braun (the builder of the dreadnought and the Japanese cruiser), but their ships aren't in the same league as either Hood or Yamato, in size, in detail and in accuracy. I'm not just writing that because he is my friend, because if it were shit, I'd be the first to point that out to him. It hasn't been posted here yet, although I built a Fairey Swordfish to go with it and mentioned Hood in a thread about that about two weeks ago. BTW, In one of the pictures in this thread the freeboard at the aft guns turrets looks very low. That is because it actually was on the real ship -almost ridiculously so. Lightsaber bars would look nicer than taps, but on those there's nothing to hold the cables in between them in place, so they weren't an option. Cheers, Ralph

It would be pretty amazing, although I suspect they haven't updated their inventory for a long long time. It is the old AT-AT, indeed, and the other set is an adventurers one, which suggests that they've neglected to remove these products from their website. Cheers, Ralph

Agreed. This has SNOT techniques only in the right places. Excellent job Ralph! Thanks to both of you. I've seen plenty of builds that were studless but that nonetheless completely failed to impress me. Of course, I do a bit of SNOT building here and there (the tail and the nose-mounted sensors are examples here), but not for the sake of it or in order to do away with studs. I don't care about studs showing and never have. I've been criticised for showing studs and there are people who seem to think that if it isn't SNOT, it's no good, so for me it is good to see that there are still quite a few people who can appreciate that there are other ways of doing things and that the result isn't necessarily inferior. Cheers, Ralph

Fair enough. I prefer the ones that you call 'unsorted' because it makes my own sorting a lot easier ;-) Cheers, Ralph

This unsorted vs. sorted question is confusing, because all of them are sorted. Different sets are just sorted in a different manner. Paying for one or the other makes no sense. There are sets in which the parts in each bag are intended for a particular part of the model that you are building. City sets tend to be organised like this. Then there are sets in which each bag simply contains multiples of just a small number of parts. Creator sets tend to be organised like this, and so are the cafe-corner type buildings. Sometimes, in larger sets, you'll have several bags with identical contents. I suppose that whether or not you prefer the former or the latter depends on what you do with the set. I can imagine that if you want to build the actual set, the former is preferable. I look at sets as little more than parts packs and prefer the latter. It makes my own sorting a lot easier, because I know that, say, all the dark bley 1x2 plates that are in the set will be in just one of the bags. Cheers, Ralph

I do know him and have met him a few times, because he is indeed a fellow member of the Brickish Association. Obviously this is being discussed in the forums on the brickish website as well and he has been giving his take on it all there 'talking on lego websites all the time'. You shouldn't believe what sewer journalists write. I'd hardly consider the Sun and the Telegraph reliable news sources. They're making it up as they go along, 'quoting' his wife saying things she never said. He's on flickr as gizmocom In Brickish we're pretty sure he doesn't actually have the largest collection and he actually never said he did. Another thing they made up. It is among the largest, though. Cheers, Ralph

Having sent a few things to the US from the UK, I know that the Royal Mail charges about a Pound (currently about $1.75 about per 100 grams). that would mean that 1.8kg (excl. packaging) would cost about $32. That said, the French mail have an online calculator to calculate the cost of sending international mail. Shipping 1.8kg costs €12.50. Shipping it such that it needs to be signed for and that the seller gets a confirmation that you've received it costs €21.80 or (by coincidence) about $32. http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/DF_postal.shtml# Perhaps he is insuring it. Ask the seller for more information. Cheers, Ralph

What do you mean by that? Cheers, Ralph

I'm quite happy with how the colour turned out. I didn't realise quite how brown old grey is until I built this. Cheers, Ralph

In the last months I've mainly been building minifig scale things and a few larger cars. Now I felt it was time for a new 1/36 scale helicopter. It's been a long time since I last had an AH-64 in my collection of aircraft. Judging from the numbers of Apaches on brickshelf and MOCpages, it's a very popular helicopter to build. However, I never got around to building a new one mainly because of a colour issue. The real helicopters are dark olive drab and the closest colour LEGO has to that and in which they've made a large enough palette of colours is (old) dark grey. I used to build US Army helicopters in black simply because by the time more suitable colours such as old dark grey started showing up in stores, I had stopped buying LEGO. Now, fast forward about ten years, and just as I had started buying LEGO again, LEGO replaces its greys with bley. Still, I wanted an Apache in old dark grey. I've collected much of the dark grey I did have and put in a few bricklink orders and here it finally is: more photographs. Cheers, Ralph

Ooh, poor Jar Jar. I'll go see whether I can find mine and have him take a spin in the cement mixer (set 7990). It's a nice review and I completely agree with it. I own a copy of this set (I got it as a gift). Sure, it's tiny and the actual mixer is probably a bit big for the minifigure, but I really do like it. The drum touches the tire which means that if you drive it around, the drum actually spins. It wouldn't on a real mixer, actually, but is a really nifty feature. For such a tiny set it also has a number of very nice parts -mainly the open-topped cone that forms much of the drum. It inspired me to build my builders van. Cheers, Ralph

I'm not sure whether any of you realised it, but I was interviewed a few weeks ago. Note that I am wrongly identified as an English builder. I only happen to live there. Hearing a recording of your own voice can be very odd, simply because when you yourself speak, much of what you hear is actually sound transmitted through your skull. The recording is pretty much what other people hear when they listen to your voice. I haven't listened to the latest episodes, but I now surely will. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. I haven't uploaded them to brickshelf yet, but there are more photographs on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/tags/policevan/ The back doors and the side door can open. It wouldn't be fun otherwise ;-) Cheers, Ralph

I think I know what you mean. A few people do truly lovely stuff with Fabuland figures and before you know it, there's lots of people who start using them, but hardly ever as good as the people who started the trend. It doesn't have to be Fabuland or in fact LEGO building either, BTW. There are always people who are original and do their own thing and there are people who are followers. Cheers, Ralph

As you know, I'm a fan of five-wide vehicles which means that I am automatically biased in their favour. Building a decent looking minifig scale car can be very tricky. They're so small (certainly four or five-wide ones) that only a few misplaced elements can make the difference between something that looks good and something that looks a little clumsy. I like the bus, but I'd loose the opening roof window. IMO adding functionality is only good if it doesn't distract from the shape and the construction of this is a little bulky. I also think the bus has a few too many seemingly random transparent elements added here and there and I find them distracting. Finding the right balance between adding details and maintaining a nice and clean look can be very hard. I am assuming you don't have the panels that you used in white for the sides of the sportscar in blue as well, but the mix of blue and white makes it look a little messy. Unless you are really trying to go for a specific pattern such as a racing stripe, you probably shouldn't mix colours. If you look at the cars on my car carrier, for instance, you'll see that most of them are uniform in colour, with only a little stripe and a door handle or so in a different colour. You could loose the doors on the van and put those on the sports car instead. I think they'd look better on that. I like the piece you used for the folded down soft top, BTW. That's something I might want to copy. Using the windows you used on the van can be tricky. I've used them on my five-wide Range rover, but am a little unhappy with them on that as well. I suspect it would look nicer if you would use a similar window as the one you used for the sports car. Please don't get me wrong. I like these, but with a little more tweaking they could be better. Cheers, Ralph

That really depends on what constitutes minifig scale. Different people have different ideas about that, complicated by the figures' awkward proportions, and if you look at LEGO's current product range, they don't seem to think about it much. Playability seems more important than proper scale. Cheers, Ralph