Ralph_S

Police Car V-LP-2C, Ambulance V-LF-2D, Air Ambulance V-A-1C I've been continuing my spree of minifig scale building with new EMS vehicles. The first is a typical British ambulance. Nowadays they're mostly painted yellow with green/yellowish green checked markings on their sides. These were a lot of fun to build. You can see it here with my earlier fire engine and policecar: This view shows the ambulance from the rear. Many emergency vehicles in the UK have red and yellow chevron markings on the back, all to make them more conspicuous. The doors work and it has a lift for lifting the stretcher into the vehicle: Having built the ambulance (and being rather fond of helicopters) it was almost inevitable that I'd build an air ambulance. It is loosely based on an MBB/Kawasaki BK 117 (known in much of Europe as 'Medicopter 117' as a result of a truly laughable TV show about the unlikely exploits of a Air Ambulance Crew) The helicopter has working sliding doors as well as clamshell doors under the tail to allow a stretcher to be slid into the cabin from the rear. More pictures can be found in my minifig scale vehicles set on flickr. I am having great fun building minifig scale vehicles and hope you'll enjoy them too. Cheers, Ralph

I presume you mean a minifig scale one? I've never seen one that looked even half-decent and haven't managed to build one that I liked either. If you're looking for a bigger one, I've made a series of photographs of the construction of my VW Beetle Convertible. If you want an even bigger one, LEGO make the new VW Beetle set ;-) Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. I've been building things that are an odd number of studs wide for years now, mainly because of my airplane building. It's nothing new. The seven-wide trucks aren't all that hard really. It took a little before I got the hang of five-wide cars, because space is at a premium and it creates a few issues with the radiator, for instance, but now that I've built a few they're not that hard any more. Cheers, Ralph

Sorry guys. I had missed this thread being resurrected. I am glad you like the vehicles. I'm afraid I don't have any instructions for the red bus. I'd rather build than slave away working in ML-CAD. I do have some photographs of the difficult bits, such as the doors and the front. http://www.flickr.com/photos/madphysicist/tags/bus/ Hope that helps. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks, Greenhair. Their fantastic 'choice' is mainly a consequence of them listening to my suggestions. I sent them a list of set numbers that I wouldn't mind having Cheers, Ralph

Thanks for all of your best wishes. I was away from home and my computer for a while, so I didn't get to see your messages until now. I did get LEGO. My parents know how much fun I have building with LEGO and they'll even happily buy me LEGO for my 33rd birthday. They bought me the tan creator house. My sister pitched in with the LEGO city garbage truck and the cement truck. Cheers, Ralph

I haven't made many pictures of individual cars because I don't think that MOCs that small are really worth it. You'll find all of them in my minifig scale set on flickr. I've also taken a series of pictures showing close-ups and some of the cars partially dismantled to show how they're made. Cheers, Ralph

I'm not going to argue with you about it, but perception is everything and some of yours look quite a bit like the ones Dr S. has done. Consider yourself unlucky that he beat you to it when it came to posting them. BTW, I realise that the problem with the aspect ratio is due to code on MOCpages. It doesn't deal well with photo's that are portrait rather than landscape. To fix it, you need to hack the html code on the page and swap the numbers for height and width for those two photos. Cheers, Ralph

You've obviously put quite a bit effort into these, but I'm not entirely sold. You've obviously seen Dr Sinister's work. The ones made by Dr S seem much more obviously tongue-in-cheek and not so much in yours. It's clear that he's having a laugh and that's probably why I like his a lot more. Perhaps it's also a question of me thinking that his idea is fun and original if one person is doing it, but the fun wearing off very quickly when others follow in his footsteps. A few technical things: you've changed the aspect ratio of some of the pictures, distorting the figure's proportions. Oh, and enemies is spelled with 'ie' -not a 'y'. I'm not a spelling-nazi, but this caught my eye straight away. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. I can see 6-wide cars working too. As I wrote, they're based on the trucks in current city sets. I also wanted to limit their size a bit in order to be able to use them in city scenes such as those we do with the Brickish association, with pedestrians and cyclists etc. I actually just came back from a display we did in Hampshire (in a disused Victorian water pumping station that's now a volunteer-run museum -hence the rustic surroundings). One of us is getting his math wrong though, because mine are 1/45, and if yours are 1/54.54, my vehicles would actually end up being bigger than yours. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. There's nothing wrong with studless, but I myself don't mind studs showing, so I can't be bothered to do something about them. It's good to know that somebody appreciates my lack of effort Cheers, Ralph

I'll be honest with you, I'm not impressed by the truck. The changes are really minor compared to the truck in the set and one of the larger changes -the new sides to the flatbed- are the least successful. The original looks a lot better. I do like the Ambulance, even though the changes there aren't all that major either. They do work, however. I completely agree that having a black backdrop for the grille tiles on the front is a lot better than having them white. It simply looks more like a radiator. The checkered pattern is very common on emergency vehicles in the UK, where they are sometimes called Battenburg markings. Almost all police cars have them in yellow and blue, fire engines often have them in yellow and red and ambulances have them in green and yellow -colours that are pretty close to your choice. It looks good. I think it looks better than blue and orange. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks Lasse. I know you're no slouch when it comes to truck-building, so I really appreciate it. The cab on the car carrier is a bit plain, but I can imagine that the sight of seven cars on a truck can be considered impressive. My inspiration came in part from the wonderful American car carrier built by Pierre Normandin, but since my cars are a bit bigger I managed to give them a little more detail. I also decided to go for a European truck and those tend to be rather different. Cheers, Ralph

7-wide actually, but never mind. Thanks guys. I'm glad you like them. I'm happy with the car carrier, but like the look of the long haul truck a bit better myself. Must be the colours. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks. The part that actually carries the cars is 7 studs wide, BTW. The cars are five studs wide, so six wide wouldn't have been wide enough. Also, most of the LEGO city trucks are technically 7 studs wide if you include the mudguards that stick out on either side. Cheers, Ralph

in recent weeks I've been very buys building minifig scale things and I posted some of these in another thread a few week ago. Since then I've been building a few more. They're all scaled to fit with most of the trucks in the current city sets. The cabs are six studs wide, but the trailers are 7 studs wide (excluding small bits that stick out a bit further). The first is a typical European long haul truck: The second is a car carrier : The final pictures shows the two together with my British fire engine. All of these as well as all my other minifig scale stuff can be found in my minifig scale set on flickr. I hope you like them. Cheers, Ralph

It's interesting ho many of you mention mega bloks. I'm always immensely ticked off when I go too woolies and the only LEGO I find is a bunch of lousy Bionicle sets wheras they seem to have a huge variety of Mega Blocks. Something is going wrong there! Many people don't really know the difference between LEGO and Mega Blocks. They see bricks with studs and think it's all LEGO. If you don't know that there is a difference and that the quality of LEGO is a lot better than Mega Blok's (even though LEGO has had a few quality issues in recent years) and go to Woolies to buy a present for their grand-children for instance, and they see a fire engine that costs 12.99 from LEGO and see that the same money also buys them an enormous scale model of a tank or whatnot from what they think is LEGO too, albeit with a different name on the box, the choice seems easy. Cheers, Ralph

Well, there's a supposedly budget bookstore next door, but that's just a ruse to get you in there, because they mainly sell Christian books. So, I tend to take that sort of thing with a grain of salt :D Cheers, Ralph

I didn't read your profile, because it actually says you're in Hampshire! Sorry. They usually have a very limited number of different sets, but usually some interesting ones and often cheaper than in other stores. Cheers, Ralph

I think things have improved a little, actually in the last two years. Indeed, Woolworths always have a very small selection (some Batman though), but my local Toys R Us has pretty much everything. Gamleys is good and even The Entertainer have started selling LEGO again and when I last went there a few weeks ago had pretty much every single city set on their shelves and quite a few Coast Guard sets as well. Indeed, The Rockbottom Toy store sell lots of Batman and I bought an Avatar set there as well. They do grey import from the US, without a doubt. Is that a chain or is there only one, by the way? If not, Shoc may live close to where I do (in Hampshire). Now that LEGO have sold a very large part of their stake in the Legoland parks, the shop in Windsor doesn't get exclusives anymore , which means they have pretty much the same sets for sale as any other large toy store -only more of them. I can only compare the situation with The Netherlands and Germany, and it doesn't seem to be very different. There are very few independent small toy stores left anyway. Cheers, Ralph

Jay! That makes my 1979 scala bracelet look positively cool! Ralph

Indeed, a great idea, except I'm not completely sold on the set that my number corresponds to :D I actually remember this set. Perhaps my sister had it. Cheers, Ralph

The EN is a completely virtual organisation. Sure, people build armies, but irrespective of who controls the EN, the actual hardware is sitting in people's own bedrooms/ LEGO rooms and is utterlu unaffected by any of this. Let's say somebody declares 'war' on me. What would that actually mean? I happen to know Dr. S. in real life, but we're more likely to have a cup of tea together than a fight. I am obviously missing the point here . Never mind. I'll go away now. Ralph

<SNIP> I find the latter part of this message the most interesting point raised in this whole thread I've seen of this sort of thing on MOCpages as well; people forming 'alliances' and 'declaring war'. No offense, but could somebody please explain to me what the point is? I can see some humour in it (certainly in Dr. S.'s propaganda posters), but you declare war and then what.....? Cheers, Ralph

The build was a bit boring and I suppose a big grey ball isn't all that interesting, but since the Death Star II in the movie is a big grey ball too, I don't see the problem. I didn't think it was particularly fragile. I don't care about minifigs or playability either. A few plusses: in my opinion it looked pretty damn impressive sitting in my LEGO room and the construction is really clever. All in all, I actually liked this one, but perhaps I have a different expectation of sets than most of you. Sets are mainly parts packs and would you look at the quantity of grey plate in this thing! (It's new grey BTW). I paid half price for it at shop@home UK, which is still a _lot_ more than half price from the US, and I didn't regret it for a second. Cheers, Ralph