Ralph_S

I'd have to say more than one month. In fact, nowadays I rarely take anything apart. I occasionally produce something that I decide I don't like and take apart within a few hours or even minutes after completing it. Out of the MOCs that I actually do liked, the shortest ones in recent years were three models I built for an event in The National Space Centre in Leicester (UK) in November last year and even they lasted more than a month. One survived until December, the second one was taken apart in February and the third one is currently partially dismantled and sitting in a box. Most of my MOCs have been in one piece for months or even years. My oldest MOC is probably close to fifteen years old, although I do keep upgrading it with newer parts and newer ideas and it looks considerably different now than it did back when I first built it. Cheers, Ralph

Perhaps indeed. I could also imagine other UK AFOLs not even knowing about Brickish. Did you?

I read the same message on MOCPages. It's been up there for a few weeks. I don't believe the experiment explanation for one second and being rude in an apology obviously defeats its purpose. It's rubbish. All the copied photos of my MOCs have been removed. That's good enough for me. Cheers, Ralph

You might run into the issue that quite a lot of AFOLs in the UK are actually members of The Brickish Association, including myself and several other UK members of this forum. The UK's already pretty well covered as far as events are concerned and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the members aren't really looking for even more events -certainly not events organised via some other group. That might explain some of the perceived apathy. It's not my intention to get territorial here, but I would suggest that if you're interested in events in the UK, you take a look at Brickish: http://www.brickish.org Cheers, Ralph

My bad. I didn't read the bionicle part of the the title. Sorry. Bionicle doesn't register with me.

Err, most of those colours are in fact in production and available in the current line-up. Light blue, regular blue, regular red and regular green. I don't want them back, because they aren't actually gone. You can even buy them on online PaB! Teal and purple don't interest me at all. What I would like to see is sand blue. The last set that had that in any useful quantity was the Titan XP and the parts selection in that colour is very limiting. Cheers, Ralph

I view sets as little more than parts packs. I don't even put most of them together. Cheers, Ralph

I suppose everybody has their own system, but stacking parts like that doesn't appeal to me at all. Too much work -not just when sorting, but also when building. How you sort all depends on the size of your collection, I suppose. I know people who have collections that are so large they have a little drawer for each individual element in a particular colour! My collection isn't nearly that large. I sort plates, slopes, tiles, and basic brick by colour. As an example, I have a separate boxes for red 1-wide plate, 2-wide red plate, and a drawer full of red bricks and one of red slope. The same for tan, black, and dark grey. I have so much light bley that it takes six drawers. The drawers are not transparent, but my memory serves me well enough to keep me from having to go through all of them in search for that elusive box of dark green or whatever. Special elements get their own boxes/containers regardless of colour, for instance 2x2 round bricks, click hinges, plate hinges, headlight bricks etc. For small stuff or special elements that I have in fairly small quantities, I have a number of cases (that 'normal' people would use for screws etc). If I have a particularly large number of a given part in a particular colour, that gets its own container, for instance, bley jumper plates. Depending on what I happen to build, I might sort a particular colour a bit further. I keep some stuff in bags, that in turn go into fairly large storage bins. I'll typically use them for parts that I don't use very often such as large wheels, various large exo-force elements or train parts (which I may never use). It's not an ideal system, because I keep having to move things to ever larger boxes or separate categories further to keep things manageable, but it works. Provided that I have them, I can usually find the parts I need without too much trouble. Cheers, Ralph

It all depends. If the judges prefer classic hot rods, it's fine with me to leave things as it is. If they don't, we'd better split it ;) Seriously, the contest is fine the way it is. It's actually quite funny to see how many different interpretations people have of a hot rod. Cheers, Ralph

You can do it in two ways. Manually (I have no idea how to type example code without the forum interpreting it as the actual commands!) or using an easy option of the code that runs the forum. When posting a reply you'll see a series of icons at the top of your edit window. One of those is for adding the code for a photograph. If you click it a window will pop-up, asking you for the picture's url. It'll need the url for the actual photograph, so ending with .jpg or .gif Cheers, Ralph

That's a really nice idea! I saw these on brickshelf this morning. I was never into slot car racing, but I can imagine that being able to have your own design running down the track is pretty neat. Just little nitt-pick: perhaps posting lower resolution pictures in the forum would be a better idea. I've got a pretty fast internet connection and nonethless it took ages for them all to appear. Cheers, Ralph

Great! I joined Brickish about a year ago and it has been great fun. Last year's Petersfield show was my first public event and I really enjoyed it. The guy who deserves most of the credit here is William, who organises the lego show every year. If you want to meet Brickish members on the road, there'll be a display at Legoland Windsor in the May bank holiday weekend (I'll probably not be there myself). The one you really don't want to miss is the Great Western Lego show, in the Steam museum in Swindon, that'll take place in October. It's a two day event and it's great. Members pulled out all the stops last year and this year's event will probably be even bigger. I for one intend to bring all the aircraft and helicopters that I have in the UK (should fill a few tables) and I wouldn't be surprised if the tabletown army will also be there in force. A lot of pictures of last year's event can be found in James Shield's flickr gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostcarpark/c...57602339438818/ Dr S. was also in attendance: http://www.tabletownonline.com/steam2007.html Cheers, Ralph

I saw your model in the entry thread and I couldn't agree more: a proper hot rods is based on an actual car and with all due respect for those of of you who've gone for something completely outrageous and crazy, I prefer a slightly more conservative approach. I suppose "Biff's '32 coupe" shows that, as does the "Plymouth Rock" Lego monster and I built together. That's what I really like about your car: it's clearly some sort of modded "Yank tank". The oversized engine is just what it needed. I also like the driver and his many girlfriends. Blue and yellow flames on a red car are a bit too bold for my taste, but they're pretty cool. Nice. Cheers, Ralph

Petersfield was a great show and I am glad that you enjoyed the first public outing of your army. You may sometimes think that your MOCs aren't quite up to the same standard as the MOCs of some other members of Brickish, but I think you should give yourself a little more credit. Your models have a charm of their own and the whole army assembled together looked quite impressive. It was also good to talk to you again, BTW. Cheers, Ralph

Don't worry. I may have a strong opinion on the subject, but I am not easily offended. We can agree to disagree. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys.

Thanks for the welcome and for the suggestion. Cheers, Ralph

The playboy logo on my F-14D was a fairly recent addition. The US navy had a single black Tomcat with a Playboy bunny until around 1992, when the bunny was removed in a wave of political correctness that also involved changing squadron names and logos that in some way involved the devil. American politics, sheesh! Anyway, roughly ten years later it reappeared. I recently gave my F-14D a little upgrade, rebuilding the tailfins in the process. That required new stickers and that was as good a time as any to also give mine Playboy bunny markings. My future plans are constantly changing. At the moment I'm working on a UH-3H Sea King and I'm sure I'll build more helicopters in the non-too-distant future, for instance an AH-1W Super Cobra or perhaps even a CH-53E Super Stallion -provided I can figure out how to build a folding seven-bladed main rotor. As far as jets are concerned, I'm thinking about an AV-8B Harrier II and in the longer term possibly an F-22 Raptor. If you were to ask me the same question a few weeks from now, I may very well say something different, though. Cheers, Ralph

About three years ago I joined Eurobricks. It wasn't nearly as big as it is now and there are only so many forums one can actively participate in. I occasionally read posts on Eurobricks, but didn't actively participate in discussions until a few days ago, when I found out about the hot rod contest. Eurobricks certainly has grown. Some of you may know me or my MOCs. I'm known as Mad Physicist on Flickr and as RalphS on Brickshelf (the url is in my signature). So, I am back. In case you are interested, I've posted some pictures of MOCs in two other threads: Lego scale models of aircraft and helicopters and 1/22 scale cars. I look forward to getting to know you and your creations and, of course, to showing you mine. Cheers, Ralph

Six-to-one scale, so each brick in the castle is six times as large (so six times as tall, wide and long) as an actual LEGO brick. It's a big shame I didn't get to see it. I couldn't make it to this year's AGM, but I took a picture of what various members built last year: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2617598 Brickish has been doing quite a lot of this recently, although the sheer size of this thing boggles the mind. Great work. Cheers, Ralph

After mainly lurking on Eurobricks for the last three years I was drawn out by the current hot rod contest. I've already posted some of my cars in the town and train section of the forum, but suspect that my aircraft are perhaps better known. They don't really belong in town, some I am posting them here separately. B-1B Lancer flanked by an F-15E Eagle and F-16C Fighting Falcon F-14D Super Tomcat "Vandy One" (an earlier version of this aircraft was in brickjournal issue 2) Su-27 "Flanker-B" E-2C Hawkeye CH-46E Sea Knight Mi-24V "Hind-E" More pictures can be found in my wings and rotors photosets on flickr as well as in my brickshelf folder (link in my signature) They're all built as close as I could to 1/36 scale. Before you ask, the cockpit canopies aren't LEGO. I know purists don't like that, but sculpting them out of transparent plate or trying to use star wars canopies, for instance, in most cases simply wouldn't give a result that looks realistic enough. Tell me what you think, Cheers, Ralph

Neither Ed or I know too much about classic American cars. We discussed various styles of hot rods and since I already did a bog-standard 32 coupe, we felt we should do something different. I suggested a 'lead sled'. We actually looked at a Pontiac Torpedo 8 initially and liked the style of that. We then stopped looking at pictures and simply started building. Ed has decided to call it the Plymouth Rock because it sounds pretty neat and has it a historical connection to the former overseas colonies (also known as the United States). It's a bit of a joke, really. I don't see why Ed or I should have problems with somebody else building a car with a similar colour scheme. It's not as though we invented it. I look forward to seeing it. Cheers, Ralph

V-LV-39A to V-LV-39D Thanks for the welcome. Simon, I know your brickshelf folder. Great stuff, especially your Thunderbird. I have also known Johannes for quite a while because of our shared interest. I have many more cars, busses, fire engines and trucks (about 50 in total). Most can be found in my brickshelf folder (the link is in my signature). I actually have a subfolder there that has a pictures of almost all of the models that I currently have in it: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=306651 It has two pages, BTW and includes my aircraft and helicopters. Those are probably better-known than my cars (some have been in brickjournal and on the Brothers brick for instance), but since the hot rod contest brought me here, I decided not to post any pictures of the aircraft or helicopters here yet. I'll probably post some of those separately some other time. My cars are not all American, although the majority is. The Cobra is actually a combination of an English car (the AC Ace) with an American engine. A few examples of my other non-American cars, from my Flickr wheels set: VW Beetles (German) Mazda RX-8 (Japanese) Lamborghini Gallardo (Italian) I currently don't have any concrete plans for any new cars or trucks except for a new fire engine. A Dusenburg might be interesting. The scale came about years ago. I wanted a scale that allowed me to build both regular cars and trucks with the wheels that I had available at the time. You can see what I use for my cars and I use model team wheels for trucks. Obviously it's impossible to be exact when it comes to the scale and I'm not even going to try building a car that's eigth and a half studs wide on a 1/22 scale, for instance. If I try to build one of those, my model will be either eight or nine studs wide. Generally all of this works out to my trucks being 14 studs wide, pickup trucks 11 studs, regular cars 10 and small cars (such as the Beetle) 9 studs wide. I usually use the wheelbase and the overall length of the real car to work out the other dimensions in bricks. For many American cars, such as the ones Johannes builds, 10 studs wide equates to a scale of roughly 1/24, because the real cars tend to be rather wide. I have to tell you, they really do look a lot simpler than they are. I do tend to go for perhaps somewhat old-fashioned studs up building most of the time, mainly for structural reasons. What makes them complicated are the working features. If you browse through my flickr set you'll see that almost all of them have doors, engine and luggage compartments that open and they all have fairly detailed interiors. The same applies to Johannes' cars. They typically have very detailed engines and drive trains -more detailed than mine. The windows are non-lego. It's something I started doing for my aircraft out of necessity and then carried over to my cars. Cheers, Ralph

Hi Ed, welcome to Eurobricks :D Cheers, Ralph

V-LV-38A to V-LV-38C Believe it or not, I've been a Eurobricks member for three years, but was mostly a lurker until recently. I was drawn out by the hot rod competition. I am mainly an aircraft builder, but I also dabble with building cars. You may have seen some of them on flickr or brickshelf (or even MOCpages). Here's three of my most recent builds. My Shelby Cobra: A 1946 Mercury Sportsman Woody: and (a piece of sheer American evil on wheels) a Ford F150 SVT Lightning pickup truck. I've also entered a hot rod in the build competition. You can find all of these and more in my Flickr wheels set . Tell me what you think. Cheers, Ralph edit: stupidly the title of the thread suggests my cars are 1/20. That would be the scale of LEGOland cars. Mine are actually slightly smaller: 1/22.