DLuders

@ Superkalle: I can be your volunteer. There is a U.S. Postal Service outlet 1 mile away from where I work, and it's not too busy. I've sent and received packages from all over the world.

@ PavementPilot: Have you seen Philo's (Phillippe Hurbain's) Lego Panaramic Photography accessories? He likes Panoramic Photography too.

You will have to regularly sample the Air Temperature to determine whether the greenhouse windows need to move SLIGHTLY OPEN or slightly closed. The rotation angle of the motors may be as little as 5 degrees per step.

Brian Davis wrote a nice explanation of the Lego Temperature Sensor on The NXT STEP, which leads to this programming block:

@ alienwar9: The 73090a "Train Weight 2 x 6 x 2 - bottom openings, center seam on end" are VERY HEAVY for their size. More common are the 73090b "Boat Weight 2 x 6 x 2 - bottom sealed, dimple on ends". They keep pirate ships from tipping over! If you modeled a 2x6x2 brick shape in LDD, it will work well for your bridge counterweight.

@ Binkmeister: There are two blatant cheaters documented on this Eurobricks post. Please inform TLG's Technic Competition judges that they should implement some or all of these suggestions made by the AFOLs on this forum: From RohanBeckett: "Would be good if they took up a suggestion I saw posted a few months ago: All entrants must take a photo with themselves - or maybe their model with a piece of paper, with a 'code word' for that competition... to prevent fake/stolen entries." From JunkstyleGio: "I do hope that TLC with change the way of "how to enter". A simple way of doing this would be an extra picture to be submitted which shows "you and the model you made". I know this wouldn't keep the whole sheet of entries clean but it would help a lot!" From Mortymore: "IMO, TLG should select a bunch of semifinalists and present them to the AFOL community to see if they find some fake entries, and only after, present a clean list of the 10 finalists, since seems that TLG by itself can't manage to do that. AFOL community is every day, every hour... searching the web for new works, designs, inspiration... so its easy for them (us) to have an idea if some competition entry was already seen before, were and to whom it may belong." From AndyC: "Requiring that model submissions include a "TECHNIC Challenge March 2011" or whatever sign would be a lot less hassle and equally effective at blocking out cheaters." From Sam42: "One idea that would eliminate such mistakes, (placing cheater's entries in the final 10 etc) would be to select a panel of technic based afols recruited from the fan community to judge the entries. As is shown here, a group of technic enthusiasts can quickly worm out all the bad apples, infact the eurobricks technic forum would be the ideal place to recruit them from...."

The ten finalists for the April 2011 Lego Technic Challenge have been selected. VOTE for your favorite by the end of April here. I spotted at least two entries that are plagiarized from AFOLs -- the "chevy" (Crowkillers/ Paul Boratko) and the Bugatti Veyron (Ming Thein). They should be disqualified for BLATANT CHEATING. :thumbdown: Here are the finalists. Only 8 of them appear to be legitimate, ORIGINAL entries: "off road super car" by savrem -- "This is an off-road super car. It has RWD, wing doors, a rear-mounted piston engine, independent suspension, a functional steering wheel, and an opening hood. It uses the big 94.8X44R tires. Please vote!" "B.V. 16.4" by TLT803 -- "This is the fastest car in the world. Its RC functions are: all wheel drive, return-to-center steering, and mechanical and airfoil braking. Its other functions are: independent suspension, V8 engine, opening doors, spring assisted engine cover opening, and opening cargo compartment." "V8 Concept Super Car" by biojo619 -- "This super casr has a working V8 engine and steering. The engine is located in the back of the car. It's a one-seater car with two wing doors. There's is also an adjustible/foldable spoiler." "fully motorized supercar" by ivanluk -- "I have always wanted to create motorized Lego Technic with automatic returnable mechanism of steering. Now the work has done in a half: the mechanism was created, but only in hand mode. Other features are: -motorized steering (not automatic return) -motorized drive on back wheels & IR RC-new design." "Audi R10 TDI" by 9Volt-boy: -- "This is a red Audi R10 TDI totally made of set 8653. These cars take part in the "24 Hours of Le Mans" race." "chevy" by havenlawrence -- "cool car its very cool and fun to play with." Crowkillers (Paul Boratko) was selling his Lego Technic 2009 Chevy Camaro on eBay (as noted two-thirds of the way down on this post). It is also documented on the Action Figures Customs Blog. Note the EXACT SAME IMAGE below that was submitted by cheater havenlawrence, and note Crowkillers' e-mail address on one of the images: "Lego BMW Z10 Eco-Super Car" by stefstef96 -- "This is my Lego Technic BMW Z10 Eco-Supercar. It is equiped with power functions so that you can steer, drive, and raise the rear supension. By raising the rear suspension, one can put more weight on the back of the car so the super can achieve high speeds as the traction increases. With V6 engine." "Bugatti Veyron 16.4" by Luc98lt -- "Engine has 16 cylinders like the real thing, but unlike the real thing, it wasn't possible to attach two cylinders to each lobe of the crank shaft, so this Veyron has a pair of V8s with joined cranks. The car is 4WD." Ming Thein's Lego Technic Bugutti Veyron 16.4 (on MOCpages from December 16, 2008) has the EXACT SAME picture below that cheater Luc98lt submitted. Luc98lt was one of the cheaters caught in the March 2011 Lego Technic Challenge too -- he should be banned for life. "Red Arrow" by Riccio08 -- "This is a sports car, radio-controlled and fully functionally. Under the bonnet there engine that looks like his real correspondent, and it works just the same! In the back side we can find the retractable hardtop, which can be lifted even if the car is moving by using the remote control." "bugatti" by joaodavid96 -- "Supercar my friend said looks like a bugatti EB110. With suicide doors and 16 cylinder W engine. Built up modularly from frame chassis." I am reporting the two blatant cheaters to Lego Customer Service (which seems to be the fastest, most effective way to get TLG Technic Challenge organizers' attention).

@ P4trickvH: If you are looking for Building Instructions for a "heavy hauler", you may enjoy Han's "Truck 8x4 with Detachable Lowloader (2010)." Look for it at the left edge of that webpage. ...and Jurgen Krooshoop's American Truck "Longnose":

@ Bartleby451: Welcome to Eurobricks! I looked at the Lego Dacta 9701 Building Instructions on Brickfactory.info , and saw the Greenhouse model pictured below. The old-style 9V motor and sensor can be run using Lego NXT, but you will need two NXT Conversion Cables (pictured below). You could find the Lego Education Store for the UK and look for Product ID: W770323. One end of the NXT Conversion Cable snaps onto the 2x2 electrified plate, and the other end clips into your NXT programmable brick. Bricklink.com has several Activity Booklets for the 9701 Control Lab Building Set. You may already have these. The Bricklink Inventory shows all of the parts you are supposed to have in your set. The old-style (pre-Mindstorms) sensors are shown. P.S. Have you seen this Lego Engineer website? It has programming blocks SIMILAR TO the ones used by NXT, so you could possibly adapt the ideas there to run the 9701 Dacta Greenhouse....

@ Milan: The 8466 Offroader set has the steering angle below, and the 8070 seems to have about the same, 90-degree angle:

On his Flickr photoset, SFRIP posted 13 pictures of his Lego Technic STINGRAY Concept Car. It has LOTS of motorized functions documented in the picture above, and it L-O-W. Perhaps it was an entry in the April 2011 Lego Technic Challenge. It may be modeled after the 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Concept Car which will be featured in the upcoming "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" movie coming out on June 26, 2011. SFRIP posted details about his MOC on HispaLUG.

The Quebec LEGO User Group (QueLUG) posted these pictures of Lego Technic creations on their Flickr photoset. They were gathered for a "Meeting of the QuéLUG club which is held in Repentigny", which is a suburb of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

On his Flickr photostream, thirdwig/ thirdwigg posted pictures of his latest Trial Truck "based on the MAN LE 10 ton truck. The truck has four wheel steering, suspension, and drive. There is one PF [Power Functions] XL [motor] for the drive, one PF M [Medium motor] for steering, and two PF M to operate the three speed transmission. at . at .More pictures at http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=463925 ."

Nathanael Kuipers wrote an extensive follow-up article on TechnicBRICKS about his Lego Technic Jeep Hurricane. He discusses the technical challenges of proving the zero-turn-radius concept.

@ PavementPilot: OK, I'm familiar with Bill Shaw's (Inanimate Reason) NXT 1.0 to 2.0 Conversion Kit. Since he provided a Parts List (see below), why can't you just keep track of the parts you use in LDD on a separate spreadsheet?

You did a great job capturing the essence of this supercar! The 1992 Vector W2 originally sold for a whopping $455,000. It's powered by a twin-turbocharged V8 that produces 625hp and 650 ft-lb of torque.

As Grohl noted on this Eurobricks post, there are photo-sequence Building Instructions for his Lego Technic Ford GT Mk IV. I compiled his various Brickshelf photographs into a single PDF document (16.5 MB) which you can download here via MegaUpload SkyDrive. All 305 pages are numbered. Even if you may not want to build it, you may want to quickly flip through the PDF document to see some new building techniques for some aspect of the car.

I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to do, but the 8547 Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 set has this Parts Inventory. If you want to get the Lego Digital Designer (LDD) .lxf file, AndyC recently made one for the standard Alpha Rex 2.0 model, and posted it on this Eurobricks post. I'm not sure what kind of "conversion kit" you are talking about. You can use LDD Manager to keep track of any additional/different parts that you have in your digital model.

On his Facebook page, Sariel posted his 43-minute, High-Definition (HD) of the TRUCK TRIAL GRAND PRIX MAZOVIA. Held in Warsaw, Poland, on April 16th, 2011, the event attracted 16 contestants navigating 3 different Trial sections. In regards to his "...video from the race, I suggest viewing it in HD quality - I took me 48 hours to provide it, including processing over 30 GB of total videos, a whole single day of editing, a whole night of rendering, and some 3 hours of YT processing the nearly 1.9 GB video file. Enjoy!" Thanks, Sariel, for all of your work to allow others to view the action! In HD, it's like we were there! [NOTE: To see the video in High Definition, click on and press the "Full Screen" icon at the bottom-right corner of the screen that you see.]

I like the seats, the GPS satellite dish, and the box of spare parts!

Akiyuki recently posted this of "20 GBC [Great Ball Contraption] modules built by me. 4 modules (screw, sweeper, shovel, pump) [are] based on Philo's . The module at 5:24 [is] based on Isogawa's. The pneumatic module at 7:00 using Linmix's image. Some other modules [are] being inspired by GBC fans."

I like it! There are quite a few rusty "Rat Rods" plying the streets now that Spring has arrived!

I think the TLG's TECHNIC Design Team is trying to strike a balance between COST and COMPLEXITY of their Official Sets. For those parents (and teenagers) without a lot of money to spend, the 8081 makes a nice birthday gift. For those who want to spend additional money to MOTORIZE the set, the design allows for an easy conversion. As Splat has done, the 8081 is just BEGGING to be customized or "pimped" , with fancy wheels, offroad lights on the top, different color schemes/striping, better seats, etc. AFOLs have "pimped" the "ugly butt" of the 8070 Supercar, and they'll likely do it to the 8081 Extreme Cruiser too.

It seems that the "crashing boom" problem has been noted by others who bought the 8421 Mobile Crane. Gyl Midroni noted on this post that "releasing the pneumatic switch to lower the boom results in a crash of the entire boom to the ground. Why doesn’t it gracefully glide down? Shouldn’t the air leak out of the pneumatic cylinders more slowly? This is VERY bothersome. Is it a defective cylinder? or a defective design? I have never before seen one of those pneumatic switches where one of the two outputs is totally unused, and similarly for the cylinders - one of the inputs is unused on each pneumatic cylinder, so of course the air leaks out fast. Am I missing something here?" There are several Brickset reviews, like this one from Bizkit: "... the pneumatic sistem for this well design crane is wrong. I don't get it why didn't they put tubing for the lowering of the boom. It would not complicated much the actual structure of the crane... and this way it simply falls down, no fun in that, I have to catch to boom every time and put a warning for others to handle with care :). The problem could be solved by putting tubes where they are missing, completing the pneumatic system this way. I think that everybody got the extra pneumatic T piece, so hold on to it and gets some tubes (I wish I have some tubes right now)." BigMac said on this post: "I dare to say that the design of the pnematic part of ths super set was not carefull enough. To have a better control of the down movement of the crane arm, as mentioned by another review before, the air outlet/ inlet of the pneumatic pistons should all been collected, cannot have the downward outlet open. The reasons is that the crane arm is very heavy, as the down section of the piston is open, air is allowed to release through the open outlet quickly without any control. Once the air presurre in the upward section of the pistons is leased the whole crane will bang down in one tenth of a second." BigMac suggested these improvements: "To improve the pneumatics control, I added two air tanks to it. You may have to follow the suggested steps below, otherwise all the air stored in the tanks will released by just one downward movement. After the alteration, now, I can have crane arm ( 2/3 extended), at least six up and seven down movements with two full tanks of compressed air. Step 1. Plug the only open outlet on the air switch, ie fully air tight, no air can go through. To avoid the air leaking from the tanks when switching to lower the crame arms. Step 2. Connect the air tanks and fixed at the left and right side of the crane, ie. move together with the crane platform is being turned. Comnect the hose to the pump and tanks. If you have the patience to read up to here, you should know how to connect air tanks. Step 3. Connect the TWO open ends of the pistons ( ie one on each piston) by ONE single hose. pierce the hose (perferrably about one cm from one end, so that it can be reused in future by renmove this end) with a thin pin, just pierce once, you don't have to see the hole, actually cannot be seen by naked eye. This is to controll the air relaesed from the pistons and hence the downward movement of the crane arm. After the alteration, I still have to controll the switch very carefully and slowly, but its all under control. The above works quite well for my model. I don't think this alteration will damage the compressor or the pistons."

"BRICKJOURNAL columnist Jared K. Burks has written the ultimate resource book for minifigure customization! It's an 84-page FULL-COLOR Trade Paperback. Download a free PDF preview here. This preview features a good sampling of the tutorials from the book." "Minifigure Customization: Populate Your World! shows you the wide range of techniques you can use to alter the lovable LEGO® Minifigure into any character you can imagine! BrickJournal columnist and author Jared K. Burks (known online as Kaminoan) has created thousands of custom minifigs over the last 13 years, and this full-color book assembles his knowledge into a series of step-by-step tutorials on decal design and application, color alteration, custom part modification and creation, plus tips on minifigure displays and digital photography to capture your custom figures in the best light—all the way through complete custom figure creation! Essential tools are identified, plus there’s a tips and tricks section, and a gallery of some of the best custom figures ever created! Don’t live inside the box—populate your world with any alien, superhero, historical, action, horror, or science-fiction figure you can “just imagine”!" See the publisher's website for more information on how to get the complete PRINT or DIGITAL edition.