Ralph_S

I don't quite see the appeal of using Fabuland figures nowadays, but some people are doing some pretty funny things with the figures. However, when I was a small child I used to love Fabuland -much more so than minifigs. Minifigs all looked the same with their silly smiley faces, whereas Fabuland figures actually had some character. I still have about 30 figures. Indeed, as a few other people have mentioned, the utensils can come in very handy. Cheers, Ralph

I don't think it's a catalogue. To me the text seems unlikely to appear in one of those. Both of the photographs are actually quite similar to the UCS sets. If you look closely at the Snow Speeder you'll see that it too is actually different from the set. This makes me suspect that these were early designs for the sets. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. I am glad you like my MOCs. I used to have difficulty building something realistic that fit with minifigs and consequently I didn't do much minifig scale building until about a year ago. I stuck to building larger cars such as these and aircraft. However, I am a member of the Brickish association and I see some of the truly wonderful stuff that they do for minifigs on a fairly regular basis and I decided that I wanted some of that action. I found that the tricks that I've picked up building aircraft full of half-stud offsets and with working landing gears and flaps and suc translate into minifig scale building quite nicely and am really enjoying doing that. In fact, apart from the odd car now and then I seem to mainly build minifig scale things at the moment. Cheers, Ralph

No problem. Forget about it. Cheers, Ralph

You seem to take my point of view and turn it into something extreme. I resent that. I've never told anybody to shut up -just to take those things into account in forming your opinion. I have never said that Lego is above criticism. They do some dumb things, such as the whole grey/bley fiasco, for instance. I think people have been respectful of each other in this thread, but not very respectful of a company that seems to have really opened up to the opinion of AFOLs or the designers of these sets. I understand that you don't like lime green and orange, but that doesn't mean they haven't thought about it. Just because you don't like it (not being part of the group the set is aimed at) doesn't mean LEGO is being dumb. Of course you can argue about personal taste, although just like discussing whether you like cauliflower or sprouts, there's really no point. I'm done with this. Ralph

Thanks everyone. I really would love to have enough pink parts to build a car similar to these in pink. It's a bit of a cliche, I suppose, but it would probably have to be a 59 Cadillac. I considered building the Bermuda station wagon in light blue, but there aren't any hinges in that colour and I really needed them for the slanted roof pillars. I had to settle for a red one. I think it is an odd car and not particularly pretty, but out of the two it was the most interesting to build and I suppose that shows. The radiator too some doing. he Impala is a much sleeker car and looks prettier IMO, but other than having to work around not having hinges, it wasn't a particularly difficult build. I'd love to replace much of the light bley with proper chrome or lacking that, pearlescent or silvery grey, but don't have enough parts in any of these colour to actually do that. I probably ought to buy the agents silver car. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. The Swordfish seems to be a fairly popular model among die-cast aircraft kit builders and I found a number of websites with photographs of their models. Those were a great help in figuring out all the details. I also had a number of three-view drawings to help with the shape. When building a model of a real aircraft much of the time I spend actually goes into finding and studying photographs. By the time I start actually putting bricks together, I'll already have a pretty good idea of how big it will have to be and how I'm going to build various bits. Cheers, Ralph

I'm a great fan of Hamilton. In the last few months I've reread all three books in the Trilogy and have also read 'Pandora's Star' and 'Judas Unchained' by the same author, in what's called the commonwealth saga. He's following those up with a new trilogy. The first part of that is called 'The Dreaming Void'. That appeared last year and I've already read it twice. The second part will be available in early October and I've got it pre-ordered via amazon. His books are massive, but they are also hugely entertaining. If you like Hamilton, I can also recommend Charles Stross. He does space opera too. The two books of his that I've read (he has written more) are 'Singularity Sky' and 'Iron Sunrise'. They are great. I'm currently reading 'The call of the weird' by Louis Theroux. It's very funny. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. I'd done camouflage before, so that wasn't too hard. The trick is to never have a border between two colours be more than three studs long before having the border step at most one stud. The landing gear was a bit tricky. The wing fold mechanism was a lucky accident of sorts. The outer panels on the upper wings are slightly swept back and I knew that the best way of getting that right was using a plate hinge. I then realised that this plate hinge would sit exactly where the hinge for folding the wing on the real aircraft was located. So, all I needed was a similar hinge in the bottom wing. What was a bit tricky was building the connecting struts strong enough to keep the outer wings together when folding the wings. It all work reasonably well. Indeed, Lego Monster's HMS Hood is going to be amazing. For those of you in the UK, HMS Hood and the Swordfish it will be on display in Swindon in the first weekend of October. For more info: http://www.brickish.org/steam Cheers, Ralph

I don't think there's a lot of fun to be had in all this bitching either. I never said that you or anybody else isn't supposed to give their opinions. All I am saying is that your opinion would possibly become more nuanced if you take a look at those sets and see what it is that LEGO is trying to do. I'm convinced that many 7-12 year old will actually like these, which means that LEGO is actually doing a pretty good job. You are taking your supposed logic too far, completely ignoring the fact that LEGO seem to making plenty of sets that are aimed at an older audience and that there's a lot more to discuss when it comes to LEGO than just sets alone. Cheers, Ralph

I have a hard time judging whether you're agreeing with me or not. I didn't actually call Power Miners <insert that tiresome argument>. However, they are aimed at children as are Agents. The sets don't need to appeal to me. Just because I may have some reservations -looking at them from my AFOl point of view- that doesn't mean there's anything particularly wrong with them. I'm not the target audience. I still don't like agents, although I've come to appreciate the sets a bit more because they do have quite a few clever gadgets and some really nice parts. I'm sure there'll be quite a few parts in these Power Miners sets that I'll be hard-pressed to use, it looks as though it'll get a lot easier to get hold of useful parts in lime green than before. Looking at them from that perspective, they're actually pretty good. Some sets have useful parts, some sets don't. The themes that I do like, because they tie into what I normally build, are city sets and creator and LEGO's been doing excellent work on those IMO. The rest, castle, Pirates, Bat man, Star wars, are pretty much all the same to me. Cheers, Ralph

I was initially going to build an RAF Catalina flying boat -the aircraft that found Bismarck after its engagement with Hood- but realised that I wouldn't have enough parts. I'm running out of white plates. A Swordfish seemed like a suitable alternative. I was hesitant to start building that because I expected all kinds of problems, with the gear and with building it to minifig scale. Fortunately it came together a lot quicker than I thought and I am quite pleased with the reception it got, both by you guys and with it being blogged on TBB. The strings almost drove me nuts by the way. If I tightened them a bit too much, something would come apart or one of the knots would come undone. I ultimately had to settle for them drooping a bit here and there. Cheers, Ralph

I'm not going to start arguing about what constitutes minifig scale (I prefer 5-wide too) but these are nice. I especially like the white car. It reminds me of a 'seventies Cadillac somehow. Cheers, Ralph

A good friend of mine, known on flickr as Lego Monster, is building a ridiculously huge minifig scale model of HMS Hood. He's asked me to build an aircraft to go with it. Since it was instrumental in the sinking of the battleship Bismarck in the second world war -the ship that sunk Hood- I chose to build a Fairey Swordfish. It has a number of first for me, at least in a long time. Normally I build my aircraft too big for minifigs, but since the ship model is minifig scale, my aircraft had to be too. It's also the first bi-plane MOC I've ever made as far as I can remember. It was a fun build with a few interesting challenges, such as the undercarriage, the slanted wing struts and the folding mechanism. all photographs I hope you'll like it. Cheers, Ralph

V-LP-7D I've just finished uploading some detailed photographs of the construction of my Ambulance to brickshelf (it might take a while for it to moderated). I have also completed a new vehicle: a van as used by British police: Cheers, Ralph

I think a lot of people are very harsh in their criticism (as was I of the Agents line) but they seem to forget that LEGO is in the business of selling sets to 7-12 year olds (mostly). AFOLs aren't the target audience for this line and I think have very little to complain about when it comes to what LEGO is doing in general. Before you start complaining that you're not an AFOL, read the terms of use. When the first pictures showed up I didn't know what to make of this line, although since I look at sets as little more than parts packs, I liked them. I can do with more lime green. Having seen these photographs of much better quality I have to say that I'm not at all disappointed. I don't know whether any of you are at all familiar with underground mining equipment, but bright colours are the norm and I can imagine these flashy colours selling. I don't care for the monsters or the playability, but the designs do look interesting. Not bad at all. Cheers, Ralph

That looks a lot better. I hope you are glad that you followed my advice. I sure am! Now it looks like a monster truck. Nicely done and also pretty good that you managed to keep all that clever technic stuff inside it. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. I haven't posted any new aircraft here because I actually haven't built that many in the last months. The last I built was an A-10 Thunderbolt II about three months ago, and I did post it back then. I am currently working on a new one that's almost finished. When it is, I'll post it. I'm not sure how to 'share' my building secrets short of making instructions. I have no intention of doing that, because it's just too tedious. I could explain how I go about building something like this, but I know that what works for me might not work for somebody else. Cheers, Ralph

In the last month I've been building a lot of minifig scale stuff, but I haven't forgotten about larger cars. I've got a book on classic American cars and found a lot of inspiration in that. Both were built for challenges on the LUGNuts group on flickr. So, here are my latest two models. The first was build for the "sympathy with the underdog" challenge, in which you had to build a car that just gets no respect. I chose a 1958 Edsel Bermuda station wagon. Edsel was a new brand launched by Ford in 1958, but it failed spectacularly due to bad quality control, economic recession, their weird name and last but not least their oddball styling. It seemed perfect for this challenge. The radiator was tricky as were the slanted pillars for the roof, but the styling grew on me while I was building it. The second is a much more successful model in real life. It is a 1960 Chevrolet Impala coupe. This was built for the 'colour me strange" challenge, involving building a car in an unusual colour. Baby blue (LEGO medium blue) is very much a colour of the fifties and sixties, so it seemed like an obvious choice. Building it in this colour was complicated by the lack of hinges, but it does have opening doors as well as a boot and bonnet (trunk and hood for Americans). Both cars were built to the same scale, so here they are together. More pictures of these and some of my other classic cars are in my classic cars set on flickr. I hope you like them. Cheers, Ralph

I normally post my non-minifig models in 'other themes', but that's not what this is about. It's about the MOC and I'm afraid that I think it is really oddly proportioned. If you look at most monster trucks you see a body based on that of a normal pick-up truck but on a completely different chassis with much bigger wheels. You've got the chassis, but the body doesn't really look like any pick-up truck that I know and it seems much too to wide. The wheels tend to really stick out, much further than is the case on your MOC. I don't know why the body is so large, but I suspect it's because you wanted to add a lot of technic features to it. It's always great to try something that lies outside of what you normally do, but I think you need to make a clear choice on where you want to go with this. If you want a lot of technic features you probably need to make the whole thing bigger and will need bigger wheels. Alternatively, if you want something that looks like a monster truck I'd recommend forgetting about the engine and focus on the looks. Most model team vans and jeeps had a body that was 10-12 studs wide. One of those would look good on this chassis. Cheers, Ralph

I have. AFAIK html doesn't work here, but BBcode allows you to have a picture as a link as well. The photograph is on flickr (as you may have seen by now) and its user guidelines stipulate that if you post a picture that is hosted on flickr elsewhere, the picture should be linked back to flickr. Computer things aside, I'm glad you like my MOCs. Cheers, Ralph EDIT. Sorry. you are right. The other link is messed up. I've fixed it.

I haven't gotten around to it yet, I will make some photographs of the ambulance partially disassembled to help those of you who'd like to build one too, but I dislike working with ML-Cad too much to invest the serious amount of time it would require to put the model in there. You'll have to do a bit of puzzling it out on your own. I have made photographs of the smaller cars, BTW. I need some decent natural light, but the weather this week has been very gloomy. I agree that the figures are important. After all, what are minifig scale vehicles without minifigs? Ambulance workers here tend to wear green uniforms with a day-glo yellow jacket. Similarly, helicopter crews mainly wear orange or red jump suits. Going through my box of minifig parts to find suitable combinations to recreate that look was a big part of the fun. Until December last year, I hadn't built any minifig scale town MOCs for at least a decade. I gave up on them because the figures are awkwardly shaped, which means you have to make all kinds of compromises, and I didn't play with my MOCs anymore, and back then there was a lot less variety in facial expressions, headgear, hairstyles and whatnot. Most figures still had smiley faces. Because I did buy a fair few sets with minifigs in the intervening years, I did build up a reasonably collection of minifig parts, and when I started building a minifig restaurant for a competition, I found out that I really enjoyed putting together the figures for it. They might be awkward, but minifigs do add life to your creations. I didn't consider myself a town builder, but now I'm building all of these to be a apart of a larger collaborative city layout (with the Brickish association), that involves buildings, trees, vehicles and people. Here are some of the things that I've been building for it temporarily set up on my kitchen table: Cheers, Ralph

I'll let you know when I've done it. I got a little distracted by something new I'm building at the moment, but I haven't forgotten. I probably will put them on flickr. Thanks. Now, why didn't I think of doing that? Cheers, Ralph

Didn't you write, in reply to seeing my ambulance, that you had trouble coming up with a decent ambulance? I don;t know whether you built this one since, but it looks fine to me. I like the Smart as well. I'm no fan of the hot rod. If you search brickshelf or the MOC archive here, actually, you'll find plenty of inspiration. Otherwise: for five wide cars. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. I hadn't built a minifig scale helicopter in ages (we're talking about 15 years here) and I was curious to see what I could do with newer pieces and a few tricks that I've picked up over the years. I was quite happy with the result. Since I've moved to the UK I've seen ambulances like the one I now built countless times, and every time I did see one, I thought about how to build one. It is very colourful, but that's what makes them interesting. I never make instructions of any of my MOCs (I'd rather spend my time building new ones), but I can make a few photographs sometime this weekend, showing some of the internals. Cheers, Ralph