AndyC

7683 Fight on the Flying Wing - Theme: Indiana Jones LXF File I couldn't put the treasure chest inside the plane (or one of the diamonds in the chest!). Stickers and printed parts are missing.

Is it just me or do both links in the first post go to the same picture?

Er, no. You're confusing a whole bunch of very different legal issues (Trademarks, Copyright, Patents, and 'Passing Off' to name a few) under a term with a very specific meaning. The words aren't interchangable and the associated laws are very different, even within a country. It's probably also not too bright an idea to put anything that might be construed as legal advice on the web unless you make it very clear that it's not professional advice (for the record, I am not a lawyer!)

Generally the alternate model is less interesting than the main one, however I did buy the 8041 racing truck solely for the alternate race car model which was far nicer in my opinion (the truck being rather dull).

I think thats deeply unlikely. For every set in existence, I'd imagine TLG has hundreds of documents detailing every step of it's inception, from preliminary drawings right through to the various reworked designs. The chances of anything going through that whole process and even vaguely resembling an AFOL design are rather unlikely. Maybe some tiny detail or construction technique, but even then I suspect it's far more common the other way around.

Have done most of 7683 Fight on The Flying Wing. Slow going as LDD's interface is a bit quirky and not overly easy to use on a netbook (my full size laptop is poorly atm), but it certainly a lot more fun with Universe mode giving acess to more bricks. Just a shame they don't have ship hulls as I'd love to build some piratey goodness!

My ships are crewed by the damned. If you've treasure or brains, we'll be seeing you soon!

As much as i wanted it to be the BSB, my parents couldn't afford that so I got the Caribbean Clipper instead. A great many hours of my childhood were spent keeping the seas free from pirates! It is only in the last week that I have finally got my hands on an almost complete BSB and have spent many hours lovingly cleaning it all up. Now all I need is to replace my long lost CC and I can finally have the sea battle I once dreamt of - till then the Imperial Flagship will be keeping BSB and BB under control! :)

I bought one from shop@home and it came with a standard UK 3 pin plug, so I reckon you can order it with confidence. :)

Each to their own. As a kid I desperately wanted Lego motors to improve my Technic sets, there was just something deeply fascinating about seeing a motorized model in action, with all the gears spinning rapidly as things came to life. Only pneumatics could ever compete for making a model behave in such a life-like manner. While hand-cranked gears were interesting technically, manipulating a model directly by hand somehow never felt all that far away from what could be acheived with ordinary System sets. Even now, as an AFOL, I can't help but tinker with every new technic set I get to see how I can motorize it, regardless of whether that be just a case of powering the primary functions or adding yet more functionality. I love the Power Functions stuff and do hope Lego continue to extend it (especially if they start combining PF and Pneumatics!)

You would hope that anyone doing that as a service to the community would have the sense to make it obvious they were compatible rather than genuine pieces, perhaps by placing their own logo where the lego one usually appears. Of course if the intention was to deliberately decieve people, I guess there is only so much you can do to avoid it.

Lovely as the cheese slope is, I still think Brick 1x1 with studs on two opposite sides would win it for me. Would the cheese really be quite as good without it?

I guess it depends what happens with sets that do get flagged overweight. If a whole batch accidently included an extra minifig it may be that one gets inspected, noted that they're only overweight due to extra pieces (thus unlikely to causes returns) and it's determined that it's more cost effective to ship them as-is than to fix the "mistake".

Things to consider: Powered track, used by 9V, is unlikey to come back. This means its only ever going to get harder and more expensive to find. Even if PF was phased out at some point in the future, it's likely that its successor would use the same track. We've already seen this with RC. Investment in unpowered track, which is already cheaper, is probably better long term. Complex layouts are more difficult with 9V track. You have to prevent shorts and lots of consideration needs to go into the geometry of the layout. PF tracks can be laid out any way you can think of without worry and it's easy to "fix" geometry problems with bits of the smaller flex track. From a kids aspect, it's easier to play with. As great as 9V was in the day, that day has passed. Starting a 9V collection now as a way of getting in to Lego trains is probably as inadvisable as trying to start with a 12V collection. I think waiting for the new sets and seeing what happens with the power supplies there is your best bet - it's either going to mean the current rechargable unit gets cheaper or TLG are introducing a smaller AA battery unit that's easier to fit into trains. Either way is probably going to be a good thing.

TLG have given plenty of good reasons for not making extra cars and, short of having seen their sales figures, us AFOLs just have to accept (whether or not we want to believe it) that when they say stand alone cars don't sell well enough to justify the cost, that it's true. I think, personally, we'd stand a much better chance persuading TLG to sell the parts needed to make our own extra cars through schemes like PaB. If things like the tan train windows were available there anyone who wanted more cars could easily obtain the parts needed to make one, either following the original design or MOCing up their own versions. Indeed it may just as easily be the case that extra cars don't sell so well, because that's exactly what AFOLs have done in the past, using Bricklink etc to obtain the bits they needed. And if there were enough orders for the pieces needed to make EN carriages from PaB, maybe standalone cars would actually start to look like a viable option as sets.

TIFF is a lossless compression, so it will maintain the maximum quality possible. JPEG is lossy and designed to produce smaller files when dealing with photographs. The losses are usually impercetible for photographic images but often very noticable when dealing with images that have a small number of colours with very well defined straight lines. Which is exactly what Lego stickers tend to be.

Fantastic, I really like the entrance, not seen anything like that before. I think it's really only the awning colours that let it down a bit, they're just a little too distracting.

I'm lovin'it. My CC is still as empty as the day I got it, but that's got me thinking it may be time to give it some decor!

Good point! I'd forgotten the remote needed batteries too. :)

Since nobody seems to have picked up on it yet, if you look at the close up pics it has the black oval "Batteries not included" mark in the bottom right, which would seem to imply that it's not the rechargable battery pack. I'd agree it does look more like it, so perhaps this is the sign of a slimline battery box more suitable for fitting inside trains than the original PF one. It would presumably be considerably cheaper whilst being easy to do a 1:1 swap for the LiIon one for those that want to.

Thing is, if you actually want a decent hotel interior, it's going to end up being a gargantuan and expensive set anyway. Even CC hasn't actually got much space to put much of a hotel interior in it, in reality. Hotels just aren't a particularly small thing and, unlike things like police/fire/railway stations, you can't really get away with just putting in a couple of key areas crammed into a little space.

I was beginning to wonder what had happened to this thread, I've been thoroughly enjoying it. Must agree those two episodes weren't up to much and there was certainly a lot more potential in the storyline than was explored. Think you pretty much picked up on all the things that annoyed me about those episodes, even the bits I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Ooh, couldn't agree on that. The V19 torrent model is exceptionally well designed, looks very accurate and I think it's one of my favourite models overall. I think I'd have to cast my vote with the original Sith Infiltrator. Even in the context of the design of models when it came out, it's way off what it should look like. It has the appearance of somebody just knocking something up that was vaguely the right shape and saying job done. The one saving grace of that set was the Darth Maul minifig. As to worst minifig, having not had the, er, pleasure of seeing those podracer figures or the much disliked LUL figures, I think I'd have to say the Asajj Ventress figure. At a time when we've all become used to a certain visual quality from Lego, we get possibily the most ugly minifig ever, made worse with that horrible skirt thing. Ick.

In fairness, sounds not dissimilar to my own life. Yeah, but a minifig doctor only has to be able to clip 7 pieces together and they can pretty much cure anything. Comparitively speaking, they have a much less complex job than the poor construction workers.

Well, my first "kind of" experience with Lego trains was a bunch of hand-me-down Lego that me and my brothers and sisters had as children. It was all old 4.5V blue rails and sadly we could never work out how to get the motor working, nor could we ever figure out how you were supposed to get curves to work out (looking back it's because lots of bits, including all the inner curve rails, were lost). I remember longingly looking at pictures of the 12V trains and then later the 9V ones, but new Lego sets were mostly out of my parents price range and the train sets doubly so. Anyway, the dark years came and went, and I saw the UCS Imperial Star Destroyer model and just knew I had to have it. Little did I know at the time that would kick start a lost passion and now I have amassed a stupidly large Lego collection again, far more than I ever had as a child. Seeing the Emerald Night preview pictures brought back so many memories of days staring at the old train sets and I figured it was time to finally experience some Lego train sets. One S@H trip later and I had both the RC train sets to play with! Naturally it wasn't long before that was finally followed up with the exceptionally beautiful Emerald Night. Have to admit I'm a little sad to have missed out on the 9V era, which so far seems to have really been the peak of Lego trains. That said, I'm really interested to see how the PF stuff goes, especially as I was always a bit of a Technic fan too. And I never cease to be amazed at some of the creations AFOLs have come up with, many of which it's hard to believe are made out of those same plastic bricks we all know and love.