LEGO Military Models

The best laid schemes of mice and men (or my year in review).

2011-12-27T04:10:00.000-08:00

Those of you who were hoping for regular updates on this blog may have been disappointed by our lack of activity this year, but unfortunately all of the contributors to this blog have had very busy years in our private lives -moving from one end of my country to the other for a new job in my case. Even though we have plenty of ideas and plans for things that might be interesting for the blog, none of us have had the time.

However, I'm on leave and have a bit of time on my hand. I've been thinking about models that I might like to build and have been looking back at the year that's gone by. In a thread in the discussion on the military models group on flickr about a year ago, some of us discussed our future plans.

Here's the list I came up with back in January.

a large 1/36 aircraft (most likely a B-52)

a minifig scale WW-II bomber (most likely a B-17)

a 1/22 scale jet fighter (most likely an F-16)

a 1/22 scale helicopter (most likely an AH-64)

a 1/22 scale infantry fighting vehicle (most likely an M2 Bradley)

My list shows that my plans for writing for the blog aren't the only ones that I didn't see through. I did none of the above.

So, what have I been up to in terms of military building? Despite my sometimes hectic schedule, I have built a number of new models this year. Some of them were things that I put on the back burner years ago, but that I still wanted to do. Others were prompted by shows that I attended or activities for the Lego Military Model group on flickr. I'll go over them one-by-one.

The first one was prompted by this year's flickr military build contest. It had a category for Warsaw-Pact aircraft and even though I couldn't participate (being one of the organisers/ judges) I did feel I wanted to build something for it. I looked at a number of different options, wanting to build a jet that hadn't been done by many people before. I narrowed my choices to either the Su-24 Fencer or the Su-25 Frogfoot. Because I feared that the camouflage on the latter would pose too many problems, I settled on the former.

Su-24M Fencer-D

The real aircraft is somewhat boxy and at a first glance doesn't look all that interesting, but when studying photographs and scale models (on-line) I came to realise that there were certain subtleties to the shape that would make it challenging. There's a slight taper to the aft fuselage. It has a complicated undercarriage and the gentle outward flare of the intakes gave me some trouble. I had a hard time choosing armament for it. Fencers can carry a bewildering array of weapons, but most operational ones seem to carry unguided bombs. Somehow, I didn't fancy those. I ultimately settled on two AS-17 'Krypton' ant-radiation missiles with their associated 'phantasmagoria' ESM pod and two AA-8 'Aphid' air-to-air missiles. I think it's actually the armament that makes the model stand out. Looking back at it, I think it would have been nicer if I'd have chosen a purist solution for the cockpit canopy (more about that later), but this was a fun build that turned out allright.

After the fun I had building the Fencer, I decided to turn to building a Frogfoot after all, and as expected, the camouflage indeed did turn out to be complicated. The problem is that the number of different parts that LEGO make in suitable colours is very limited. I would have loved to build the underside in medium blue, but there are no hinges in that colour, so I was forced to use medium stone grey instead -fortunately not a bad match for the real colour. For the top I wanted to use dark green, reddish brown and dark tan. However, dark green and dark tan have very limited parts palettes. I saw no way of using both. Since there really is no suitable substitute for the dark green, I decided to use regular tan instead of dark tan.

Su-25 Frogfoot-A

I still would love to replace the tan with dark tan at some point in the future, as more parts become available, but overall, I like it.

The next thing I did, in terms of military building, was because I decided to attend Brickfair in the US in August. Magnus Lauglo had invited me to come over the previous two years and this year I finally decided to take him up on his offer. I finally got to meet him, as well as Chandler Parker, Aleksander Stein and Evan Melick. It's great fun to meet people that you've more-or-less known for years through the internet in real life. I definitely intend to go back next year.

Military builders at Brickfair 2011, by Legosim

I didn't build anything new to bring to the event. Instead I decided to take a few of my older but reasonably well-known models. I did give them a small update, however, with brick-built numbers on the Abrams, improvements to the camouflage and added details on the HumVee and a brand-new brick-built canopy and new stickers on the Su-27 Flanker.

My models for Brickfair

After I came back from Brickfair, I also decided that I was going to attend the Great Western LEGO Show in the UK in August, for the fifth time. Ever since I moved bavk to the Netherlands from the UK, this has been the opportunity for me to stay in touch with the friends I made in the British AFOL community through Brickish. I knew that I wasn't going to top last year's event, when Ed Diment revealed his USS Intrepid model, with my aircraft models aboard. This year I was going to do something small. I decided to take my minifig scale WW-2 aircraft and to add a new one, a P-61 Black Widow. It's an aircraft that I'd been thinking about building for years -one more plan that took a few years to reach fruition.

P-61 Black Widow with air- and ground crew

While I was at it, I decided that I should make the most of the benefit that minifig scale offers, by building a ground crew and some vehicles to go with the P-61 and with the other aircraft. I built a US tanker truck, gave my old Jeep an upgrade and built an RAF refueller and a German Kettenkraftrad to go with my Mosquito and He 219, respectively. With plenty of minifigs added, it made for a nice display.

Display at the Great Western LEGO Show

The next military build I did was also part of a plan I've had for years. Back in 2007 I started building aircraft that were part of Carrier Air Wing 8 that served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise back in 2001. The collection has grown over the years, but what was lacking until now, was a model of one of the Sea Hawk helicopters that was part of the air wing. I did have a Sea Hawk model, but it represented an all-black version as flown by one of the US Navy's adversary units. Back in October, shortly after returning from STEAM, I finally got around to rebuilding it in the proper colours. While I was at it, I also made a few changes, replacing the non-LEGO cockpit windows with a purist solution.

SH-60F Sea Hawk

Obviously, since it was rebuild of an existing model, there wasn't much design work that needed to be done. Most of the parts I used for the black version are available in light blueish grey and old light grey. The only exception are 2x4 wedge bricks that I used for the tapering of the fuselage towards the tail. On this version I replaced them by mounting 1x4 curved slopes sideways.

Not long after I finished the Seahawk, we had a build challenge on the Lego Military Models group, with 'military innovation' as the theme.

MV-22B Osprey

For this I decided to build yet another model that I've been planning to do for years but never started: the MV-22B Osprey. Part of the reason why I didn't start earlier was because for a long time I couldn't work out how to build the wings. They have anhedral, are (slightly) forward swept, have heavy engines at the wing tips and rotate to lie flat on top of the fuselage. For a long time it was all a bit much. However, for this challenge, I decided it was time to give it another try.

MV-22B Osprey wing fold

I fully expect to take it to Brickfair in 2012.

Because the new brick-built canopy on my Flanker turned out far nicer than I imagined, I also came up with a new plan: retrofitting my existing models with brick-built canopies and windows as well. It's going to be a long process, but I've already made a start, spending a fair few weekends rebuilding some of my favourite models.

Aircraft of the 366th Wing 'Gunfighters'

190th FS 'Skullbangers' A-10A Warthog

Aircraft of Carrier Air Wing 8

I intend to give more of my aircraft the same treatment, but expect it to take a while.

I may not have stuck to the specific plans I had for 2011, but as you may have gathered, a lot of the things that I did do had been in the works for a long time prior. So, what is up for next year? I'm not making any promises on blog posts, but you can be sure that there'll be plenty of new military models, perhaps even including some from my 2011 list. I do get around to building most of my plans eventually.

Have an excellent 2012 and happy building.

Lynx MOC being auctioned

2011-04-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

I've been asked a few times if I'd consider selling MOCs, but I've never done so until now. I guess there is a first time for everything. If you're interested in helping out a good cause, and you think this might look good on a shelf somewhere in your home check it out! The auction seems to be ending around the end of this week.

www.brothers-brick.com/2011/03/25/bricks-helping-japan/

Stalin's organ

2011-03-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Ralph and I have been busy helping organize the annual LEGO military contest, so that's probably one reason why we haven't updated this blog much lately. But just to remind our readers that we're still alive, here's an excellent diorama by pepik_ that features a Katyusha rocket launcher mounted on a Studebacker US6 truck:

Dubbed Stalin's organ by German troops during WWII because of its resemblance to a musical organ, the Katyusha still sees service today.

Achtung, Spitfire!

2011-02-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

Ed Diment built a wonderful rendition of the Supermarine Spitfire for the Flickr LEGO military build contest two years ago. So, how do you top that? By building a Spitfire twice as large!

Damn, I wish I had time to build!

Land Rover Wolf

2011-02-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

A little over two years ago, I built a model of the Land Rover Wolf, a militarized version of the Land Rover Defender that's used extensively by the British Army:

As you can see, it was pretty rough, but then again, it was my first model of a real-life vehicle. After the apparently arbitrary deletion of the LEGO 16+ group on flickr recently (which has since been replaced by a new group, AFOL 16+, but I'm getting off topic), I thought that it'd be a good idea to back up the photos in the flickr photostream. While doing so, it occurred to me that it might be fun if I rebuilt some of my old creations, seeing as my building skills have improved quite a bit over the years. The Land Rover Wolf seemed like as good a place to start as any, and within a couple of days, I had built a new model:

After posting it on flickr, Tim Ltd and Aleksander Stein pointed out that the cab was disproportionately big, and that it'd look much better if it was shortened by one stud. I at first wasn't sure that it could be done, but after having another look at Aleks's Wolfhound family of vehicles, I realized that the technique that he used to build the doors on them could be adapted to fit my Landy. After making a few other changes, I posted the revised version:

Meanwhile, Aleks had decided to build his own version of my Landy, which he dubbed the Radio Wolf, a communications version of the Land Rover Wolf, which, among other changes, he built in the camo scheme of his faction, the Nordic Defense Council, and a used a technique for the canvas that he had previously used on one of his Wolfhounds:

Tim (the aforementioned Tim Ltd) has also said that he might try his hand at building his own version of my Landy as well. I hope I haven't bored you all (our readers, that is) too much, but I thought that some of you might it find it interesting that simply building something can turn into a community project of sorts.

Tinkering with Tomcats

2011-01-30T00:43:00.000-08:00

A new cat on the block
Ever since I moved my pictures to flickr at the expense of my account on MOCPages, I haven't looked at the latter site much. This morning I did visit MOCPages and came across a very interesting model of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat built by Joshua Ciesielski. He has some very flattering things to say about my Tomcats (much more about those later), but I first want to take a closer look at his model. The overall shape is reasonably accurate, but most impressive about the model in my opinion are the working features.

F-14D Tomcat model by Joshua Ciesielski.

The Tomcat was designed in the late nineteen-sixties as a replacement for the classic F-4 Phantom. The conflicting requirements of low landing speeds and a high top speed were met by Grumman by giving their design variable geometry wings. For low speeds and for long range cruise the wings were swept out, while for high speed flight (and storage aboard carriers) the wings were swept aft. Several aircraft that appeared around this time had this feature, including the F-111, MiG-23, Panavia Tornado and the B-1B. Among these the Tomcat stood out for being the only one where the wing position was computer controlled and the actuators were strong enough to move the wings whilst the aircraft was maneuvering, optimising the sweepback angle of the wing for the Mach-number (the ratio between the airspeed of the jet and the local speed of sound). This not the easiest thing in the world to get right on a LEGO model.

F-14D Variable geometry wings by Joshua Ciesielski.

The speed of sound plays a big role in the aerodynamics of jet fighters. Conventional jet engines require vast amounts of air in their intakes, but the flow at the front face of the engine should be should be below the speed of sound (the Mach number should be less than 1). If the plane itself is flying at supersonic speeds, this means that the air in the inlet needs to be slowed down, which is done by designing the inlet such that one or more shock waves occur in the flow.
Many modern planes have fixed intakes, but aircraft designed for high supersonic speeds such as the F-15 and the Tomcat the inlet performance is optimised for each Mach number (as well as a few other parameters such as the throttle setting and the air temperature) by changing the angle of a series of ramps built into the inlet. Much to my amazement, Joshua managed to fit moveable ramps in the inlets of his Tomcat.

F-14D Tomcat variable geometry inlet by Joshua Ciesielski.

In addition to these working features, the model has a retractable undercarriage covered by doors when retracted, working flaps, slats, rudders and tailerons (control surfaces), moveable air brakes, and an opening cockpit (although it doesn't quite open the way it should due to limitations of the canopies LEGO makes).

Tomcat evolution
I'm no stranger to Tomcats myself, so I can appreciate how much work went into Joshua's model. One of the first models of mine to appear on-line was my F-14D Tomcat model 'Vandy One', which I posted on brickshelf and MOCpages way back in 2005. It was also featured in an article in issue 2 of Brickjournal.

F-14D Tomcat model as it appeared in 2005.

It was the result of a gradual process of improvement that took place over many years. The picture below shows the collection of LEGO jet fighters that I had in around 1995. The Tomcat model I had at the time is on the far right.

Fighter collection by Mad Physicist in 1995.

Comparing it to Vandy One it's obvious that there are many similarities. Whole sections of the model are built exactly the same. The differences, however, are more interesting. Note, for instance, the almost complete lack of SNOT building on the glove vanes (the sections between the jet intakes and the wing roots) and how crude the nose radome looks. The colour scheme of the old model is also noteworthy. Operational Tomcats were usually grey all over, but I didn't have enough grey LEGO at the time to build it properly. One thing that I did already have was a mechanism for synchronising the wing sweep, which has since been copied by several builders -including Joshua- and is shown below exposed on the latest incarnation of Vandy One.

Mechanism for synchronising the wing sweep by Mad Physicist.

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In the years since I posted Vandy One on-line I've kept tinkering with my Tomcats, improving Vandy One and making similar changes to my second Tomcat model -an F-14A in markings carried by jets aboard USS Nimitz in 1978.

'Vandy One' after its latest rebuild.

Vandy One received new wings -built using 2-3 wedge plates - and using other new parts the shape of the nose was modified yet again. The tailfins were completely rebuilt, giving their leading edge a more accurate slope. It also received new exhausts, replacing the older ones built with bricks and slopes and more closely representing the large afterburner cans of the F110 engines that powered the F-14D, and some of the stickers were replaced. The model that represented the older F-14A from Nimitz received new markings and new exhaust nozzles as well, representing the engine nozzles of the TF30 engines that powered most Tomcats.

F-14A Tomcat of VF-84 Jolly Rogers by Mad Physicist.

Finally, last year I got around to building a Tomcat in the grey markings that were most common on operational Tomcats since the early 'eighties, choosing to model an F-14A of VF-14 'Tophatters' that was aboard USS Enterprise in 2001.

F-14A Tomcat model by Mad Physicist.

Tomcats by other builders
The Tomcat turned out to be as much as a classic as the F-4 Phantom that it replaced and it is no surprise to me that it is a popular model to build out of LEGO. One of the first LEGO Tomcats that I saw on-line was Bryce Rollins'. He doesn't seem to be as active as he used to be, but back in 2005 he was constantly posting new models he designed in L-Draw, including many different Tomcat models. When I first saw them I was struck by how similar they were to mine, even though Bryce could have never seen mine. Great minds and all that!

One of Bryce Rollins' L-Draw Tomcat models.

Another 'virtual' builder is J. Stan over on flickr. In my opinion, one of the outstanding features on his Tomcat model (designed in Lego Digital Designer) is the way he slanted the intakes. It's something I tried on my Tomcat model many yeara ago, but couldn't manage to look good.

F-14A Tomcat model by J. Stan.

Another nice Tomcat model is the one by Scott Behne, also on MOCpages. I remember seeing this back when I was still a member and liking it back then, apart from some weirdness going on at the nose. It's still one of the best out there, also with slightly tilted intakes.

F-14D Tomcat model by Scott Behne.

Last but not least, for the last few years Mechanized Bricks have been selling a custom set of the F-14. It's not cheap, but is rather nice. Their site doesn't allow me to hot-link to picture, but I managed to find pictures of a built model (without decals) on brickshelf.

F-14 Tomcat model from Mechanized Bricks, built by Brickshelf user 3e3e3e.

Achtung, Messerschmitt!

2011-01-12T14:05:00.000-08:00

Many of the military MOCs I've built in 2010 were WW-II military aircraft. In fact, most of the aircraft I've built in about two years time are WW-II military aircraft. So, it'll be obvious that they interest me. So, what gets me to write something for the first time in months? Of course, a WW-II military aircraft!

Legohaulic built a very nice rendition of the German Messerschmitt Bf 109 a few years ago, but wasn't happy about the scale. So, he's had another go, with this very nice result.

Note the subtle dihedral of the wings and the clever use of wedge plates to break up the camouflage!

LMMBC #2 roundup

2010-12-06T10:41:00.000-08:00

While LMMBC #2 didn't produce quite as many entries as our first build challenge, we still received 14 entries, which is a very respectable turnout, if you ask me.

Our first entry is by Tim Ltd, who is apparently currently at a university with a limited supply of bricks. He still managed to build this neat little AA gun, which I can envision mounted on a naval vessel of some type.

Next up is a Tunguska tracked AA system by Snuffwuzz >.<, rendered in LDD. Unfortunately, tracks aren't available in the program, so he substituted wheels for them. That doesn't make this model any less impressive, however.

Chris C(from the UK) also has rendered his entries, a ZU-23-2 and a Rapier missile system (both towed AA systems) in LDD.

Carpet Legos has built a FlaK 88, and though he says that this is merely the latest version of a model that he built some time ago, it's highly detailed and is a nice entry nonetheless.

The Legonator turned to microscale for this build challenge and built a very cool AA train, as well as a number of different AA systems.

A relative newcomer to flickr, keegar1 has built a towed SAM system and its accompanying truck.

Tyler TJM's FlySwatter II AA system is built into a tank turret, to act as a defense against aircraft if the tank is without air support. I like the fact that it's concealed, and ready to give a helicopter or low-flying fighter an unpleasant surprise.

Babalas Shipyards has built a pair of Phalanx CIWS on latest work in progress, a massive Royal Navy frigate. They're a dead ringer for the real thing, and, just like the real thing, look like some well-armed version of R2-D2 from Star Wars (as they're sometimes nicknamed in real life).

Like The Legonator, I also turned to microscale for this build challenge, and built a diorama of US forces smashing their way through German lines in Saint-Lô during Operation Cobra in July 1944.

Next up, sniper151516 built an AA version of a Lynx light tank. The photography is a bit grainy, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an excellent and very detailed creation.

And, last, but not least, Aleksander Stein has built the XA-386 Vanguard, and AA version of his XA-380 AMV (Armored Modular Vehicle). Though it's merely a back-up for his main entry, which he wasn't able to finish in time, it's still a definite highlight of the build challenge.

Trapped Under Ice

2010-10-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

Imagelego always builds interesting creations, and his latest diorama is no exception, which depicts a tank stuck in ice. The use of round transparent plates mixed in with plates works well as melting, slushy ice, and the way the tank is partially submerged on an angle also adds to the realistic nature of the dio.

Whoever gets what the title is referencing gets a cookie.

LMM Interview: Aleksander Stein

2010-10-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

LMM is happy to bring to you its very first interview! Who better to start with than everyone's favorite long-haired Viking?

Aleksander Stein should need little introduction for anyone who has been following the military building community for the past three years. His military vehicles have been the envy and inspiration for military MOCers; and he's probably also among the military builders to receive most recognition in the online community in general. His MOCs have won awards in the Flickr Military Competitions every year, and he's even been commissioned by the Norwegian Army to render some of their newest hardware in brick.

Aleks was gracious enough to join us for a lengthy interview, where we talked military faction development, some of his favorite builds, and much else besides.

Hello, Aleks thanks for joining us. Tell us a little about yourself.

Well, I'm 23 years old, and was born on the anniversary of Norwegian liberation in 1945. I'm currently studying architecture at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. I'm an '80s music aficionado, a dedicated music collector, and a "dedicated-yet-not-that-skilled" guitar player. I also love old-school TV-series, and a bowl of breakfast cereal is never complete without an episode of Magnum P.I.

Oh, and I build some Lego stuff too.

You've become one of the big names in the military theme, yet as I recall you only started building a few years ago. Did you come out of a dark age, and how did you find yourself building military stuff?

Lego has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember actually, but I did go through sort of a "grey age" during my teen years. While I never stopped building completely, the things I did build were few and far between. When I finally picked up on my old hobby again full time, I settled on the military theme mostly because I've always been interested in military vehicles and 20th century military history. I had also been collecting military display models for some time (which I still do), so combining these interests with my Lego habit just seemed like a natural thing to do.

You have an interesting mix of MOCs that you've designed completely yourself, and what I can only describe as "personally-modified-models-of-actual-military-hardware". How did this blend of modelling and "freebuilding" develop?

Even though I build models of fictional hardware, I always try to make it look as realistic as possible – as if my vehicles could actually have existed. I'm always impressed by all the great real-life models people out there build, and the skill and effort that goes into each one. However, I prefer to add my own personal touch to the stuff I build. Inspiration may also come from more than one specific vehicle, and several of my fictional models have borrowed features from a variety of their real-life equivalents. This blend of modelling and freebuilding gives me enough freedom to do my own stuff, but at the same time adding the challenge (and sometimes restraints) of modelling something accurately/realistically.

And how do you decide which to build for any give MOC?

I think that's more of a spur of the moment thing than anything else, but there may be less chance of me making a lot of modifications to a fictional Lego model if it is inspired by a vehicle I really like. For example: my fictional CV-100 Bayonet IFV is not all that different from its real-life equivalent, the CV-90.

Earlier this year you were commissioned to build a model of the ARCHER Artillery System for a artillery unit in the Norwegian Army. How did this come about, and what is this project like for you?

There was a guy in the Artillery Battalion who happened to be an AFOL, and he had stumbled across the pictures of my minifig scale ARCHER Mk. II on Flickr. He contacted me, and asked if I would be interested in doing something similar for the Artillery Battalion. After some discussions with him and later his CO, we settled on a 1/22 scale model of the real ARCHER – about twice the size of the ARCHER I already had built. I must admit, I was a little nervous about this commission at first, especially since I had never tackled a model of this size before; and I didn’t even know exactly how the final production version of the ARCHER looked like! I did get used to building in a larger scale eventually though, and after I got some pictures of the real ARCHER work became a whole lot easier – relatively speaking.

So what was it like building a new ARCHER in a completely different scale?

At first I thought I could use the minifig scale ARCHER I already had as sort of a template for the larger one, but I soon had to scrap that idea. Building a model twice as big required a very different approach, especially due to the increase in weight. The articulated chassis needed to be thoroughly strengthened to prevent the heavy forward section and rear gun turret from drooping. The turret mount also required strengthening in order to handle the heavy pivoting gun turret.

I understand you went out to see an actual ARCHER demonstration - that must have been pretty cool?

Yes indeed, I was permitted to tag along on a demonstration of the real ARCHER at the Army base at Rena in Norway, where they showed the vehicle's features (everything except actually firing a 155mm shell), and a reloading from the ARCHER's support vehicle. I had a great time there, and the Lieutenant that had commissioned the model also showed me around in the base's garage as well. I was like a kid in the candy store.

You also travelled all the way from Norway to Northern Virginia this year for BrickFair 2010. What was this like compared to what you had expected?

It was everything I had expected, and then some. I had some idea of what it would be like from looking at pictures of previous events, but actually being there was really something else. Seeing the stuff on display up close was great fun, as was displaying my own stuff, but the best was the social side of the event - finally meeting up (and goofing around) with a lot of the guys I know from Flickr in person, as well as meeting a bunch of new people. The summer in Northern Virginia is definitely rather different from the summer in Norway though. I think I'll bring a pair of shorts next time!

What surprised you, and what was most memorable?

Heh, well pretty much everything was new to me on that trip, considering that it was my very first time stateside and the first time I attended a large-scale Lego convention. One thing that did surprise me though, was that my every single one of the models I brought survived the flight more or less in one piece. This was the first time I had brought my models with me on a plane, and I was somewhat nervous about their safety on their way across the pond.

Do you have any plans to spend more time with other builders in Norway?

I definitely want to do that, and I hope I will. I had a great time putting up the display together with some of the guys from the Norwegian LUG Brikkelauget in Asker last October, and I would love to do something like that again sometime. The only problem is that I usually have a very busy schedule with long workdays, and taking time off isn’t always easy – if at all possible.

As well as being a terrific build MOC for MOC, you're also on the cutting edge of faction development. You're juggling at least two major factions. How did these develop?

Everything started with the Eurusian Federation really, and the background story I wrote for that when I started posting my Lego creations on the net. In addition to presenting the Eurusian Federation's background, both the Nordic Defence Council (NDC) and the DRR (East Russia) are mentioned in there. I knew I would most likely be expanding into more than one faction eventually, and I thought intertwining them in each other's history would be a nice way to keep my factions knitted together in a (fictional) global perspective. This may seem like overdoing things to some, but as a 20th century history buff, I'm interested in how different superpowers and empires develop and consequently affect each other. Geeky? You bet!

When you started the factions, did you have an idea of how big you wanted them to be?

I knew I wanted to make my factions as comprehensive as possible, and that these would be long-term projects. I also wanted them to be defined, yet still open enough to include a wide selection of both hardware and smaller story segments, which are usually a part of vehicle descriptions and dios. Also, by incorporating ongoing low-intensity conflicts, the story can evolve naturally, without necessarily moving towards a pre-determined ending.

And what about your MOC descriptions - you clearly put a lot of time into getting those just right. You're essentially describing fictional vehicles and military hardware as if they were the real thing. Do you have a big story in the back of your head that you are slowly unveiling, or do you just make it up as you go?

When I'm building I often do a fair bit of research, which naturally involves a bit of reading. This leads to me picking up things here and there, which I later use in a following description of a fictional model. As mentioned, I do strive for a high degree of realism in my work, and I think the descriptions help add to this. I always like to hear about the historical context of vehicles I'm interested in, which is probably why I also enjoy coming up with descriptions for the fictional vehicle models I build, in terms of technical specs, design, purpose, usage etc. In most cases, I make this stuff up as I go along, though I often build on the factions' background stories and/or older descriptions. A good example of this is NDC transition from using the Fenrir LMVs to the newer Wolfhound AMPVs.

What can you tell us about how you see your factions developing?

Hard to say, since I don't have a set plan I’m following. As I've filled most of the slots for key frontline fighting vehicles though (and are pretty happy with those for now), it’s not unlikely that I'll be turning the focus more towards the support role and rear-echelon forces. Some more specialized units are also in the works, such as the NDC "White Bear" winter combat units, and it is high time for me to build another aircraft.

What would your tips be for builders who want to develop Military factions?

First, I would recommend anyone who wants to start up a new faction to do their own thing, solely because you have a lot more room to manoeuvre that way. You’re not tied up by another person's requirements and standards, which can kill the fun of it all really fast.

Second, be patient. You don't have to build everything at once. When you start there will be a lot of vehicle and aircraft types you have yet to build, but it's been like this for every faction builder out there – me included. Build what you have bricks for at the time, and put some real effort into it. Most people out there will enjoy a single well-built vehicle a thousand times more than a dozen rapidly assembled half-assed ones.

Third, it's ultimately what you build that matters! A comprehensive in-depth background story is never a bad thing, but don’t let it keep you from building awesome models, fictional or non-fictional.

Let's hear you evaluate your own work a little now. Which of your builds are your proudest of? Which were the most challenging?

In terms of shaping, I think the EH-191 Whirlwind (in its current revised state) still reigns supreme. The bulbous, yet streamlined shape of most helicopters is usually very hard to get right, and an angled fuselage doesn't make things any easier. I'm also rather happy with my five-bladed rotor solution.

Shaping was also the challenge on the hull on the CB-95 Rockfish. That was the first time ever I built a boat hull from scratch, but it turned out rather well I think.

More recently, I'm somewhat proud of the rotor struts for my Focke-Achgelis Fa-223 WWII model (which was a total pain to get right), and my Patria Xa-380.

Do you find it is much easier building armored vehicles, now that you have built so many?

To some extent, yes, but each new vehicle comes with its own set of challenges. I also try to do something new, or at lest something a little different, for each new vehicle I build, which means I don't always know how to solve every problem from the get-go. Of course, there are a few things that remain the same for each build, like how much room is required to fit a minifig for example.

Are there any of your MOCs that you feel in retrospect you could have done differently?

Hehe, I think those who have been following my photostream on Flickr know the answer to that already. While every model goes through a pretty extensive design process between the prototype and the posting of pictures on Flickr, I do usually end up making modifications to them sooner or later. It's especially the models I have on display at home, because I see them every day. The models that are stored in boxes or shelves out of sight are much less likely to go through major rebuilds. It still happens of course, only with longer intervals.

The main reasons for modifying or rebuilding a model are to improve its looks and/or improve/strengthen its construction. In regards to a model's construction, I may also revise it in order to rationalize and simplify it. This often makes MOCs stronger and also frees up parts, which in turn can be used in new models. This is extra economical for the NDC models, which use rather expensive and rare colours in their camouflage scheme.

Can you give us any teasers about WIPs you have in the works or other fun projects on the horizon?

I'm currently working on a new line of transport trucks for the NDC, called "Atlas", which I displayed a prototype of at BrickFair. That is the only current WIP project that is in the building stage right now, but I do have several other projects lined up on the drawing board.

What are some of your favorite recent military creations by other builders?

Well, perhaps not surprisingly, the collaborative WWII ship display at STEAM springs to mind. But there have been a lot of very nice military creations on Flickr lately. Simon T James has posted some excellent modern British military models, BrickMonkey’s SS-1 Scud TEL is also a definite favourite, Mike Psiaki's latest helicopters are very cool, so are Matt Hacker's Puma IFV (WIP). And ShockAndAwe has built a great looking model of the Stryker MGS. The list goes on, but those were the ones that immediately came to mind.

Tell us a little about your non-military projects - you build civilian farm machinery - that's a pretty quirky specialized niche. How did you get into that?

In addition to military stuff, I’m also quite into the Town (or is it City now?) theme. Though more peaceful, my interest for heavy equipment is still there, so I do enjoy building farm, construction, and industrial equipment. More than anything, it was TLC's new line of farm sets that triggered this rural project of mine, but I think there may also be a little hillbilly deep inside of me somewhere…

Do you have any building tips in general for FOLs who are just getting started with the Military theme?

Pretty much, just have fun! It may sound banal, but that’s really what this hobby is all about – even if you do build high-tech war machines. And do browse Flickr or Brickshelf (or to some degree Mocpages) if you need inspiration for what you'd like to build. There are a lot of experienced military builders out there, which you can get inspiration from. In most cases they also happen to be pretty nice guys, so don't be afraid to ask them a question or two.

Arctic build challenge

2010-10-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

They say time flies when you're having fun. It's only been little more than two months ago that Magnus, Chandler and I started the Lego Military Model Group and less than two moths ago that we started our latest build challenge. The new group may only be a fraction of the size of the old group, but we've got some great entries for this challenge. The signal-to-noise ratio is definitely up!

Tim Ltd started with a great entry called the hedgehog.

He posted two pictures and I like it so much that so will I. So, what do I like about it? First of all, the size. It's no secret that I favour the smaller end of minifig scale and with a width of a mere 12 studs, this vehicle is relatively compact.

The light grey/bley and white camouflage also works well.

If we had a prize for 'most active builder' in this challenge, Snuffwuzz >.<would have won it hands down. He's obviously having a bit of a Russian kick at the moment, producing a T90 Main Battle Tank, BMP-3 Ifantry Fighting Vehicle and BTR-80 wheeled armoured personnel carrier.

It's a shame LDD doesn't seem to do Technic tracks, because the BMP and T90 do look a bit unfinished without them, but all three are clearly recognisable and the shape and the camouflage are top notch.

BrickMonkey built a vehicle that has been on my wish-list for a long time. (I catually had one years ago, but it was yellow. No tan LEGO yet!). The SS-1, ASCC reporting name 'SCUD', is a tactical ballistic missile originally developed in the Soviet Union and (sadly) widely exported all over the world. It gained particular notoriety during the Gulf War of 1991, when the Iraqi military (under Saddam Hussein) launched versions of the Scud at targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia with almost complete impunity. They were hard to intercept, but they were also hard to destroy on the ground. The missiles could be carried and launched from so-called Transporter-Erector-Launchers. The name says it all. By constantly moving these around, it became almost impossible to track down the launch sites. Fitting for the challenge he's gone with a cool grey exterior for his entry.

He didn't actually build this Arctic version in real bricks, but he has gathered all the parts to build it in the more common desert scheme. This is blogworthy by itself, so I might as well show it here.

Cpl. Custard presents a counterweight to all this Russian-built mayhem in the form of an M1A2 Abrams, also built in LDD so also lacking tracks.

It is based on a custom kit by Tam Antony, but with a few changes to the shape of the front of the turret, added 'reactive' armour and a different colour scheme, obviously. Since I much prefer to see brick-built models than LDD-renders, I suggest you also take a look at the brick built model (largely in tan).

Avalella's C908A1 Longhorn tank shares its colour scheme with the vehicles by Snuffwuzz >.< and Cpl. Custard. It's nice to see it in the bricks (and with tracks).

I'm normally no big fan of custom minifigs, but I do like the crew he's built to go with the vehicle, using some nice-looking stickers made by flickr user Roaglaan.

In his back story Matt Hacker describes how his fictional Lynx Infantry Fighting Vehicle is Canadian-built. I think it looks quite a bit like an American Bradley, and that is not a bad thing at all.

He mentions it's still very much a work-in-progress, but it looks fine to me so far. In addition to his IFV, Matt also built a matching Multi-Purpose vehicle. At a first glance it seemed a bit large to me, but after reading the description it became clear that is is supposed to be a far heavier vehicle than, say, a HumVee.

Aleksander Stein didn't disappoint this month, also building multiple entries. His first entry is an 8-wheeled Infantry Fighting Vehicle, based on the real world Patria AMV. The real vehicle is from Finland, which already gives it an Arctic twist in my book. Aleksander added t that by giving the vehicle a camouflage scheme involving light grey and white, which are colours we've already seen on other vehicles in this challenge, but also a few bits of dark green here and there. It gives them an added realistic touch. Also note how he's built the sides with brick on its side. Very nice.

A similar colour scheme also adorns the arctic version of his regular Wolfhound vehicle

I love the tracks on this in particular.

Chris C (who is from the UK, apparently) submitted an entry that caused some discussion between Magnus, Chandler and I. We are a LEGO group and this model, of a C-130 Hercules, contains a fair few Mega Bloks. So, what to do with this? We weren't sure at first. It is a reasonably nicely sculpted model, though, so we figured we'd let it in.

I don't really like the propellors, but the shape of the fuselage, the front and the sponsons for the undercarriage in particular, is nicely done. It also has an interior.

For his first MOC posted on flickr Brickout felt like doing something a little different in this vehicle-heavy challenge. He built a small diorama called the 'Arctic Incident'.

in one of his comments he writes: "you already know the backstory, don't you". Well, no, but I'm guessing it's something from a computer game I don't know. Anyway, it depicts a US Navy seal lying in ambush inside a ruined building, ready to cause havoc to two baddies. There is no single picture that shows the whole scene, so to appreciate the details you'll have to take a look at the whole set.

Brickout wasn't the only person to have the idea of building a diorama. Our very own Chandler Parker has built a historic scene showing German troops captured by the Soviets after the famous battle of Stalingrad. The German army put the city of Stalingrad under siege for several months and had succeeded in capturing parts of the city. However, they were increasingly hampered by fierce winter weather. In February of 1943 the Red Army launched a massive counter-attack and managed to surround the German 6th Army, which ultimately was forced to surrender. The Soviets captured 130,000 PoWs, the majority of which were German. The months of fighting had already caused scores of casualties on all sides, but many German soldiers also perished in captivity.

It was the first major defeat suffered by Nazi Germany.

There were more to follow. On 'D-day', in June 1943 the Western Allies successfully invaded Nazi-occupied France and slowly but surely moved towards Germany. In a desperate attempt to halt the Allied onslaught, the German army launched a counter-attack in the Ardennes region in Belgium in the cold winter of 1944/1945. Due to weather conditions, Allied troops could not count on air support and in particular troops of the 101st Airborne Division in the city of Bastogne had to slug it out against the Germans without support or resupplies for several days.

Phima depicts a wintery scene in which US troops attack a German pillbox during the Battle of Bastogne.

Magnus Lauglo built a vehicle he calls a Snow Cat for this challenge.

Most of you cats may not remember much from the 'eighties (or weren't even around), but I remember seeing a rather similar vehicle on TV back then. In fact, here's a toy version: the GI Joe Snow Cat.

Look familiar? Knowing that Magnus likes a bit of 'GI Joeness' about his models, I don't imagine that the similarities are a coincidence.

Size does matter, but small can be beautiful. The Legonator built three microscale vehicles for this challenge.

It's a small vehicle, something that does look rather like a science-fiction drop-ship and, my own favourite of the lot, a tracked truck. This works particularly well on this tiny scale.

I'm going to end this write-up with two helicopters. Regular followers of this blog may already know I have a thing for helicopters. Sgt. Gunshow entered his UH-77 Patriot.

According to his description, it's his second attaempt at building a helicopter. I think it could do with some more clearly visible engines, but it's certainly not a bad effort. I like the teeth! I also like the name: the UH-77 Patriot.

I'm going to end this write-up with one of my favourite models to come out of it. That is not to say that I don't like the others, but regular followers of this blog may already know that helicopters aren't the only topic I have a thing for. I also love the models built by Mike Psiaki. So, when he builds a helicopter, it ticks multiple boxes.

It's got all kinds of things I like. It's nicely proportioned and is very detailed. It also includes Mike's brilliant sliding door mechanism, which I highlighted a while ago. I particularly like the rotor hub and it too has a fancy name: the UH-76 Pennacook, which fits nicely in the US Army tradition to name its helicopters after Indian tribes.
I'm not sure it's a coincidence, but we seem to be building a sequence, with the UH-76, UH-77 and the HH-78 Gannet/SH-78 Sea gauntlet. Nice!

Chandler has already introduced our next build challenge: Air Defense. I hope I'll find the time to build something for this myself, but in any case I'm looking forward to what members of the Lego Military Models Group will come up with.

Happy building!

Modular Landscaping and BrickFair Battlefields

2010-09-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

I had been meaning to get into modular landscaping for a long time, and last year I finally got started in earnest, after a fellow Wamalug member Nick Kappatos commented that my military vehicles would look so much better if they were displayed on a diorama of sorts. I knew that he was right of course, but the prospect of building dozens of baseplates worth of raised landscape had always seemed like an impossibly ambitious project. But the great thing about modularity is that you can start on a small scale, and see over time just how big you are able or want to go. I started out by developing a few basic sloped landscape elements, not knowing just how many I’d get around to building.

My basic modular landscape elements are essentially an interlinking system of large sloped elements that can be out together in various configurations and that all come up to the same height – three bricks and one plate. Two basic sloped elements can form a valley, a ridgeline, or a hillside. Two different corner slope types (double convex and double concave) are essential to basic hill formations. If I want a hillside more than one module high, I can stack elements behind one another, almost like steps on a staircase. So long as I support the raised elements from below (Duplo is excellent for this), there is no real limit to how high I can go.

My first basic elements were built on 32 by 32 stud baseplates, but as I found myself building more and more of these, I realized I wanted more variety to keep things interesting. I built modular river elements, and soon added pathways and smaller sloped elements, on 32 by 16 and 16 by 16 stud elements.

At some point I realized that it was going to be very cumbersome to figure out how to place dozens of large baseplates on a big table all at the same time. So I came up with a scaled down version of my landscape standard, using a 4 by 4 plate representing each 32 by 32 stud landscape element. I called these scaled down plates my “planning tiles” because I use them to plan my big dios. They allow me to experiment with different landscape arrangements on a small tabletop. If I am trying to come up with a design for a large hill for instance, and I run out of a certain kind of corner slope, I can either redesign the hill to work with slopes I have, or I can build the remaining corner slopes I need to complete the hill.

Over the course of the year I started using my landscape modules for small dioramas, displays maybe taking up to one table worth of space.

By the time BrickFair2010 was on the horizon, I had over 60 baseplates worth of landscape, which could be complemented by regular flat baseplates. I was excited about putting all my MOCs on display, but at some point I thought it might be interesting to open the dio up to other builders too, to turn it into a collaborative project. I knew that many of the leading builders in the military community were coming to BrickFair, and I approached some of them about the project. In the end, various builders contributed to the layout with a combination of vehicle MOCs, figs, extra baseplates, foliage and brick built trees, and best of all, a few modular elements built to the specification of my landscape standard.

One of the challenges of coming up with a community build project for the military theme is that we all essentially build in different mutually exclusive subthemes – whether WWII, modern, sci-fi, or whatever else. No matter how great the best military MOCs look, they won’t look cool all together on the same battlefield. So instead of everyone displaying together, we took turn displaying our MOCs and figs, in different themed settings. I came up with a large battlefield setup that could be split in half when needed, and we ended up going with various battlefield scenarios on different days. With John Rudy’s Gettysburg gatehouse and Chandler’s road elements, we had a huge layout of 84 baseplates to spread our MOCs over – almost four full tables worth!

Here are a few pictures of the maps I came up with for the display, using the planning tiles:

And when put together:

I had never set up so many landscape elements together before, and while I had mapped it all out in advance with my planning tiles, I wasn’t entirely sure that it would work in practice. Would the tops of the tables match up evenly enough? Would I have enough bricks to place underneath raised landscaping to elevate the terrain? I was quite relieved when everything came together exactly as planned.

When we first set up, Chandler and Aleksander Stein set up their realistic modern MOCs on what I called the “West Battlefield”, while Carter Baldwin and various other sci fi builders set up a big futuristic style battle on the “East Battlefield”. Each of these dios was on a 6 by 7 baseplate area.

The next day we removed all the vehicles and figs, and pushed the two battlefields together to create a huge 6 by 14 size battlefield, and my fictional CBU and NBR factions duked it out on the full size diorama.

For the final battles we split the field in two again, and Dan Siskind set up a terrific WWII Pacific theatre style dio on the East Battlefield, while Casey Mungle took over the West Battlefield with his 700 odd Napoleonic style troops.

Seeing all this come together for a full weekend was really a huge thrill. Adding landscape really take a military setup to the next level, compared to just displaying MOCs on a table. All of a sudden your troops can actually take cover behind hills, river banks, and in foxholes or trenches. Best of all, any LEGO vehicle that is built in the same colors as the landscape becomes genuinely camouflaged - and viewers have to spend a little more time by the dio to catch all the little details.

I’d like to thank everyone who participated in this project, either by building something for it, or by helping me with setup and teardown. I can only hope to put on something similar, and hopefully larger, next year. I’m not quite sure what that will involve, but my river definitely needs some kind of a bridge, and I’d also like to add more buildings and possibly other features to add variety and color to the display. I’m thinking train tracks, rock formations/mountains, and definitely more in the way of trenches and bunkers.

Feel free to make any suggestions. My modular landscape system is still very much a work in progress!

The Return of the Blogger

2010-09-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you all have noticed, I've been rather inactive on this blog as of late. My amount of involvement in the LEGO community tends to reflect my current level of building activity, and since BrickFair I've been a bit burnt out on LEGO, but I'm slowly getting back into building by fiddling with a few works-in-progress. It's about time that I start posting here more regularly again, so I'd like to start things off with Dr. Spontaneous's Armored Patrol Vehicle (APV) and heavy field gun:

I really like how he's incorporated the so-called cheese grater parts into the muzzle brake of the heavy field gun. The rest of the detailing is also superb, and appears to be quite functional as well.

The APV is excellent as well, and, in addition to looking good, appears to be able to fit two minifigs side-by-side, no mean feat for a vehicle that's only six studs wide at its narrowest.

All quiet on the LEGO front?

2010-09-24T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's gone all quiet on this blog. Chandler and I haven't forgotten about it and there are plenty of nice MOCs that I've seen in the last few weeks, but I have been frighteningly busy. I started a new job a few moths ago and am working like crazy. I have very little time for LEGO building, let alone for writing my normal rambling blog posts.

There are plenty of new things to look forward to, however. The end of the 'Arctic build challenge' is coming up and we've got some great entries that we'll be blogging soon) and I'll be taking a short break from work to visit the Great Western LEGO Show in the UK, where Ed Diment will reveal his USS Intrepid model (for which I designed the aircraft). You can expect an article on that and the other ships built by members of the Brickish Association for the event. We've also got a new contributor for the blog who has been slaving over his first post for weeks...

Happy building,
Ralph

LEGO Military Build Challenge #1: Arctic Warfare

2010-08-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

Taken from the announcement in the LEGO Military Models flickr group:

"Hi all, we'd like to announce our first build challenge here at LMM, the theme of which is arctic warfare. As you may remember, Ralph started a thread about two weeks ago in which he tossed out a few ideas for the theme of this challenge for members to choose from, and you all chose arctic warfare. What's arctic warfare, you ask? Well, I'll let Wikipedia do the talking:

"Arctic warfare or winter warfare is a term used to describe armed conflict that takes place in an exceptionally cold weather, usually in snowy and icy terrain, sometimes on ice-covered bodies of water. One must note the distinction between alpine and arctic warfare - arctic war does not always take place in mountainous terrain, and mountain warfare does not always take place in the cold."

So, we'd like you all to build anything that has to do with arctic warfare, whether it be vehicles, dioramas, or vignettes. Potential sources of inspiration include the Eastern Fronts of both world wars, as well as more recent conflicts such as the Falklands War and the still-ongoing Kashmir conflict. Or you might want to build an alternate history conflict, such as the Cold War gone hot, with battles in such places as the Nordic countries, Russia, or even Alaska. Or maybe you'd like to build something completely fictional. It's entirely up to you!

You have until September 31st to post you creations in the entry thread. If you have any questions, feel free to contact any staff member, or just ask in this thread. Just to clarify, this build challenge is just for fun, and there aren't any prizes involved. Now get building!"

Can I have instructions? (part 2)

2010-08-10T12:40:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I posted a link to instructions for two of the aircraft I have been building for Project Intrepid.

In the last week or so, I have been making instructions for the third, the F6F Hellcat. I found the whole process much easier than the first two times around, but it still took about ten hours. The model has 626 parts and the instructions have 32 pages. As with the other instructions, I'm releasing these under creative commons, attribute, non commercial, no derivative license. These aren't for commercial use!

You can download the file by clicking the picture below.

I'd really appreciate getting feedback by people who download these and (possibly) build their own versions.

Happy building!

Huey

2010-08-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Some machines change the very nature of warfare. After experiments towards the end of WW-II and operational use in Korea, the helicopter came of age during the long and arduous conflict in South-East Asia, when the US Army used large numbers of helicopters in air-mobile operations. One of the machines that made this possible was the Bell 205, better known as the 'Huey', one of the world's first turbine powered helicopters. Variants of the Huey are still in service all over the world and Heuys are still being built today.

I myself took a shot at building one a few years ago.

It is a twin-engined HH-1N, a model that until recently was used by the US Navy for Search-And-Rescue missions. I was (and still am) quite happy with how it turned out, but one of the things that I never liked was how the sliding doors on the cabin don't follow the contours of the fuselage when open. Looking at my pictures right now, I find none that illustrate this clearly. This is probably no coincidence!

This week the ever-innovative Mike Psiaki posted pictures of his own new model of a Huey. His older model was already more than decent, but the new one tops it. It's full of great techniques, it's small enough to look good with minifigs and he's come up with a pretty radical way to make the doors work, solving the problem I couldn't a few years ago.

I don't normally say this sort of thing, but this has to be the best LEGO Huey model ever. Great work.

Treating the wounded in Normandy

2010-08-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

I don't normally refer to other blogs when writing here, but in the last few weeks I've been reading a series of articles that I found particularly interesting and that I felt like sharing. Andrew Becraft (aka. Dunechaser) is new to the military scene, but hardly a stranger to the on-line AFOL scene as one of the regular contributors to The Brothers Brick. His latest creation is a WW-II Battalion aid station.

In a series of posts on The Brothers Brick about his recent project Andrew revealed that that recently he has become more interested in building models and that as with many people from our generation, his grandfather fought in WW-II. This combination lead him to this project.

In a post about the vehicles Andrew describes some of the planning and his thoughts on scale. In his second post he describes the whole diorama. In a final post he describes his planning process and the role feedback from other community members played in the project. If you like the sort things I've been writing here his posts are definitely well worth reading.

The whole diorama is impressive and so is the effort that went into the individual vehicles. I'm already looking forward to what he'll build next.

LEGO Military Models' own flickr group

2010-08-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I toyed with the idea of associating it with its own group on flickr, but I never got around to it.

A number of recent developments have caused to me revisit this idea and to start a new group, obviously called LEGO Military Models, or LMM for short. Magnus Lauglo has joined Chandler and me as a fellow admin and Jas Nagra has agreed to become moderator. The new group is dedicated to LEGO models of military vehicles or equipment and dioramas and vignettes, from roughly WW-I to near-future military. This can include fictional MOCs. In order to keep the quality up, picture content will be moderated. We hope that this appeals to many of you, and invite you to join us.

To start with, we will be running a new build challenge this summer. Head over to Lego Military Models on flickr to discuss what it'll be about.

Can I have Instructions?

2010-07-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Whenever anybody asks me this question, the answer is generally 'no'. I'd rather spend my time building something new than behind my computer slaving away using some CAD-software.

However, sometimes it can be time well-spent. As you may have read, I've been designing aircraft for Lego Monster's Project Intrepid. What complicates the collaboration a bit is that currently we don't live in the same country any more, which means that even if I had the time to build dozens of aircraft models in a few months time, they'd be nowhere near their aircraft carrier. That made making instructions worthwhile. The two aircraft types of which we intend to have the largest numbers are the Vought F4U Corsair and the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver

LDD or MLCad/LDraw
Two different types of CAD-software are commonly used by LEGO-fans. LEGO's own LEGO Digital Designer and LDraw using Mike's LEGO CAD (written by Michael Lachmann) adding a graphical user interface (GUI) for editing the files. LDraw contains a library of parts (in .dat-files) and uses its own file format (.ldr files) to determine where the parts are placed, how they are oriented and what colour they have in your model. The LDraw parts library is maintained by volunteers and includes a truly staggering amount of different parts, both old and new. A separate program, called LPub reads the .ldr files and turns them into instructions. LDD can also produce instructions, but its part library is far more limited even though with the release of the LEGO Universe game many new parts and colours have been added.
Both of my aircraft models use some rare (transparent clear tiles) and old parts (old-style finger hinges, for instance) that I suspect aren't available in LDD. Furthermore, when I dabbled with digital LEGO a few years ago I used MLCad for a bit, so I had some familiarity with the program. Below you see a screenshot of MLCad displaying my Helldiver model.

Much has been written about LDraw and it is not my intention to write an extensive 'how-to' on making instructions. Instead I will share a few things that I ran into and the way I solved them on my way to making instructions.

Hacking LDraw files.
Making the instructions involves two main steps: making a digital version of the model in MLCad and then making images of each build step to go into the final instructions using LPub. MLCad offers the option of adding step commands between adding parts. Obviously, when making instructions for your model you need to think about how to work through it, layer by layer, for instance, in order to make sure that every part you add in each new step is supported by an existing structure and is visible in the instruction images. The STEP-commands are read by LPub when you start making the instruction booklet. Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but this doesn't seem to work all that well. No matter where I add the steps in MLcad (placing a STEP command in the LDraw file), when more parts are added later they can end up pretty much anywhere in the file. This makes a complete hash of things, with parts floating in mid-air because the supporting constructions is to be built at a later step. Not good.

However, LDraw's files are set up such that you can actually read them. The file is a list of the various commands and the colour, coordinates and orientation of each part. LPub reads this from top to bottom when making the instructions. By swapping the order and adding step-commands yourself in a text editor, you can easily fix things. It takes some getting used to, but I found that once I got the hang of it, I could do it very quickly, by switching between the text editor in which I had the file open, MLCad to identify the parts, and LPub to show me how my actions affected the instructions. MLCad also allows you to add commands to rotate your model such that the part you're working on will be visible, using a handy pop-up window that gives you a preview. These too can be manually adjusted in the file to optimise the result.
Further advantages of having human-readable files is that if you are having a bit of trouble lining two parts up in the graphical user interface, you can simply change the coordinates in the file. It also allows you to change colours quickly and I used manually editing the files to quickly mirror structures. For instance, if I have a right wing and want the matching left one, as a first step I would invert the sign of the appropriate coordinates in the file. You can see an example for the horizontal tailplanes of my Helldiver, with an image and the corresponding LDraw code underneath. The 3rd, 4th and 5th column are the x,y,z coordinates of the part (obviously the location of the origin of the part relative to the shape of the part is set in the .dat file for the individual part). If you compare the 5th column in both files, you'll see that I have inverted the sign (of the z-coordinate), thereby mirroring the part locations. Since the tailplane uses a few left/right wing plates, they had to be replaced by their mirror images (54383.dat and 54384.dat are the 3x6 wing plates). Some parts will need to be rotated (which can be easily done using the GUI) or replaced by their mirror images, which is simply a matter of changing a number. It might seem complicated, but it's much faster than 'building' the left wing from scratch, especially if you then have to manually edit that file again to place the step commands in their proper locations. Manually hacking the file, this one took me about five minutes.

Using sub-models
One important tip I can give you is to split your model into smaller sub-models.

Unless you have a massive screen to work on (I don't, I use a laptop), large models will be very small on your screen and will be awkward to work with. Using separate sub-assemblies also means you can use separate small .ldr files which are far easier to manage (and to edit) than big ones. When you finally reach the step of making the instructions, the sub-assemblies can also be done separately, much like LEGo themselves do for their instructions. Here is a sample page of my Helldiver showing one of the tail-planes as a sub-assembly.

Using LPub to make the actual instruction booklet
Like MLCad, LPub also adds its own commands to the .ldr files of your model. This can be very handy, because you manually edit things yourself. Back before LPub4 came out this was the preferred way of doing things! Fortunately, in LPub4 you can edit things graphically. However, if you mess up or LPub crashes -which it does occasionally- you may end up with files that you can't run any more. So, here's a top tip: make a backup of all the .ldr files of your model in a separate folder/directory before you start serious work in LPub.

When you first run an .ldr file of your complete model through LPub, every single step including all the steps taken in sub-models get their own page. For my Corsair this lead to 159 pages and for the Helldiver the number was a whopping 207. Perhaps this works if you build with your computer handy, but if you want a print-out it obviously isn't practical. Lpub allows you to group multiple steps on the same page and even in multiple columns. You can put sub-assemblies in a separate little box (a 'call-out', as illustrated in my sample page). All of this makes the instructions a lot more compact, but also much easier to work with because it is easier to keep track of what sub-assembly you are building at any given time. Some people use LPub to export images and then use some other desktop publishing package to turn the whole thing into a booklet. Since I am making these primarily for private use I felt sticking to LPub would be good enough and I am happy with the end result. LPub also allows you to add a bill of parts (a list of every part use in the model, with a picture), although with more than 600 parts in both of these models, the resulting picture becomes too big for a page. Fortunately you can scale the size of the part images LPub uses to make the thing smaller. I also added a front cover (an image file I made using a different program) to make the whole thing look more like a little booklet. Making the booklet for the Helldiver took about 6 hours, but I learned a lot in the process. After this experience, I turned to the Corsair and turned its instructions into a reasonably neat 27 page booklet in less than two hours.

Sharing the instructions
I only made these instructions so that Lego Monster and I can build multiple copies. However, I do feel that if I have them anyway, it would be nice to offer other people the opportunity to build the models as well. I am not doing this for a profit. If you are interested in your own free copy of either the Helldiver or the Corsair, you can download the .pdfs by clicking the images below (they should take you to mediafire.com, a file sharing website). A word of warning: these are not simple models and they require fairly large numbers of parts that aren't readily available in large numbers.

In the last few years I've heard of a few cases where people took the trouble of making instructions, only to have other people start selling them claiming that 'you can't steal what is free'. In case there are misunderstandings about this, I'm releasing my instructions with a Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerives. In other words, you can distribute them freely, but they should be attributed to me, and they cannot be used for commercial purposes or modified.

Happy building!

Weathering

2010-07-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

This morning Bruno Vaiano asked a question in the flickr military group that got me interested. Real military vehicles often have a weathered or somewhat dirty look, certainly the all white vehicles often used by UN units, and Bruno asked about ways to recreate this effect in LEGO.

Short of using dirty bricks or using paint, I felt this is something hard to do using just LEGO bricks. The only weathering that I've done involved my F-14A Tomcat, where the two colours I used lie close together (blueish grey and old grey) and the effect is so subtle you'll be hard pressed to see it in a picture.

John Lamarck answered with an interesting method that does involve making your bricks dirty. He burns the end of a cork using a candle (an excellent excuse to open a bottle of wine) and rubs the cork onto his LEGO leaving a fine layer of soot behind on the bricks. According to him it can be removed using a tooth brush and some water.

I'll take his word for it, but the result looks pretty good. The aircraft itself is a model of a Junkers EF-112, an aircraft designed during WW-II that never flew. It was John's entry for this years flickr military build contest and ended up winning him a well-deserved third prize in the 'Alternative Reality WW-II" category.
Try this method at your own peril. I will not be held responsible for you burning the house down playing with flames and corks after drinking a bottle of wine!

Building helicopters

2010-07-04T02:58:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I started writing a new blog post about the results of this year's flickr LEGO military build contest, before getting bogged down by work and not finishing it. For those of you who haven't seen the results, they were announced early in June. I may revisit it in the future, but when thinking about this blog this morning I decided I was more interested in writing about a very different subject.

A lot of people build fictional helicopters out of LEGO. Many of them are really nice, but browsing flickr and being a member of the flickr military group, I've also seen lots that in my opinion could be a lot more realistic if the builders had a somewhat better understanding of how real-world helicopters work.
I wrote a somewhat rambling post about this on flickr about a year ago, but this time around I'll illustrate the points I was trying to make with pictures of LEGO helicopter models, both of fictional and of real-world helicopters. Here are a few examples of helicopters that prompted my post.

Ascension class Heavy Lift Helicopter by BrickArt!san

Helicopter V3 WIP by Cpt. Decius

RAMM Spatzenfalke Support Helicopter by ѕроок

Alpha One by ~Tac~

Wyvern Attack VTOL by [Carter]

I am not singling out particular builders because I want to be nasty to them. I could have chosen a whole range of other pictures from flickr. The reason why I chose these is not because they are bad models, because they are not. They have a lot going for them: the builders have used nice techniques and have spent a lot of time fiddling with the details. The Wyvern even was the 2nd prize winner in the 'stealth' category of this year's build contest. However, each and every one of these models has a number of features that makes them look decidedly odd to me and as such serve to illustrate my point. Once you've read this post, my suggestion is to take another look at these. Hopefully you'll see what I mean.

I'll give you a sample of the sort of things I'll be focusing on, using a picture of my own OH-58D Kiowa Warrior as an example.
It is not a fictional helicopter, unlike the ones I've shown so far, but it shows a number of features of a real helicopter.

Configuration: like most helicopters it has a single main rotor. This means that it needs a tail rotor

Details: the Kiowa is covered with a lot of lumps and bumps, but it has many relatively smooth surfaces too and the overall shape is aerodynamic

Engines: the Kiowa is powered by a single gas-turbine engine, with an air intake in the front and an exhaust on top

Proportions: the tail rotor sits at the end of a fairly long tail boom. The tail boom is almost half the length of the overall length of the fuselage

I'll show more examples as I address each of these points in more detail.

Helicopter configurations
Most helicopters have a single rotor. In the picture below I've drawn a top view of a typical helicopter. In my drawing the rotor blades turn in a clockwise direction.

One or more engines turn the rotor blades relative to the fuselage. Physics (specifically conservation of angular momentum) tells you that the torque required to rotate the blades must be balanced. If it isn't, the fuselage of the helicopter would start to rotate in the opposite direction (counter-clockwise in my drawing). This is the reason why most single-rotor helicopters have a tail rotor. It generates a sideways force on the tail of the helicopter that balances the torque, keeping the tail pointing in the same direction. In my drawing this force points to the left. The internet is full of videos of helicopters crashing due to tail rotor failure, such as this one of a Sea King crashing aboard a US Navy Destroyer in 2002.

As far as I know, everybody aboard survived, but it wasn't pretty. Show me a single-rotor helicopter without a tail rotor and this is the sort of image that pops into my mind.

Some real-world helicopters have a system called NOTAR in which the sideways force is generated by blowing air through a specially shaped tailboom. Other helicopters use a so-called Fenestron (or fan tail), which is basically a tail rotor built into a duct in the tail. A nice example of a LEGO helicopter with a Fenestron is Aleksander Stein's SH-78.

There are a few alternative arrangements that involve one set of rotors turning in clockwise direction and a second set of rotors turning counter-clockwise.

Coaxial rotors (one on top of the other), once again illustrated by a fictional model by Aleksander Stein:

Inter-meshing rotors, illustrated by Daniel Zayec's Fl-282 (the winner of the helicopter model category in the contest)
.
A fictional example was built by Dan Rubin.

Tandem Rotors. An example of a model of a real-world helicopter with tandem rotors is my own CH-47D Chinook, with one set turning clock-wise and a another set turning counter-clockwise.

An alternative configuration, with the rotors side-by-side is Aleksander Stein's Fa-223 (the 2nd prize winner in the helicopter category of this year's competition).

The bottom line is that if you have a set of rotors turning, you'll need some way of countering the torque this generates. If you build a single-rotor helicopter, you'll need to think of a system to counter the torque. If you want to stick close to the real world, that means either a tail rotor, a Fenestron or a NOTAR system (which requires a specially shaped tail).

Details
The next item is more subjective than the previous one. Builders of space models generally prefer for their designs to have greebles or greebling. I have the impression that people who are very much into space building cannot resist adding greebles to machines where they are a bit inappropriate. While reducing drag isn't as important for helicopters as it is for aircraft, helicopters are supposed to move through air and some aerodynamic shaping makes sense. When building a helicopter you need to carefully balance your desire to add interesting details and the overall appearance of the helicopter as a vehicle designed to move through air. Beyond a certain point, adding more bits in an attempt to make things look interesting only makes them look messy. In that light, practice restraint when it comes to adding transparent bits representing lights in different colours, something I call random lights. Real helicopters don't have all that many lights and certainly none on the ends of the rotor blades!

Engines
Most modern helicopters are powered by gas turbine engines. These are essentially the same as a jet engine, but rather than delivering thrust directly they are used to rotate a shaft. It is connected to a gear box which drives the main and tail rotors. Gas turbines require a lot of air to run and produce a lot of hot exhaust gases. So, helicopters powered by gas turbines typically have an air intake and a big exhaust pipe. Many helicopters have more than one turbine, in which case they will usually also have more than one intake and exhaust. Magnus Lauglo's Pegasus is one example of a fictional helicopter which clearly shows the location of the gas turbine (above the passenger compartment) with an intake in front and exhaust at the back.
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As always, there are exceptions. Gas turbines are susceptible to damage from ingesting sand, so many helicopters have their intakes covered by particle filters. In that case, rather than a big round hole for the intake, there tends to be a cylindrical device sticking out with vents all around it, called a particle separator. It's clearly visible on the engine pod on my MH-53 model (shown here with its tail and rotor blades folded).

The picture of my Chinook clearly shows one of the helicopter's two engines mounted in a pod next to the aft rotor pylon. The exhaust pipe at the back is clearly visible, but the intake at the front is covered by vents; another example of a particle seperator.
To reduce the Infra-Red emissions of battlefield helicopters their exhausts are sometimes covered by large boxes that are designed to mix the hot exhaust gasses with cool ambient air. In that case, rather than a big pipe sticking out somewhere, there will usually be a big box with vents. The picture of Aleksander Stein's SH-78 shows such a box. Some light helicopters and old helicopters are powered by piston engines, which require less gas flow. they tend to have air intakes and exhausts that are far less visible on the outside. Examples are the Fa-223 and Fl-282 I've already shown. At the time when those were designed and flown, gas turbine engines were still in their infancy.

Proportions
This item is closely related to the section about the configuration. On a conventional, single rotor helicopter, the tail tends to be fairly long. The reason for this is quite simple. Since the strength of the torque generated by the tail rotor is a product of the distance to the centre of rotation of the helicopter and the sideways force generated by the tail rotor, the longer the tail is, the less force it needs to generate to counter the torque generated at the main rotor. Only helicopters with coaxial rotors or with inter-meshing rotors tend to have a short tail. The rotor is the main source of the lift that allows the helicopter to fly will sit close to the helicopter's centre of gravity. On a tandem helicopter, the centre of gravity will sit roughly in the middle between the two rotors. A consequence of this is that, typically, a single-rotor helicopter will have a tail boom that is about as long as the cabin (although it's not always easy to determine where the cabin ends and the tail begins) and the part of the fuselage behind the rotor mast is a lot longer than the part in front of it. Check out my Lynx, for instance:

Anything else looks odd!

Putting it all together
You might be tempted to think that all these 'rules' are unnecessarily restrictive, but I am convinced that if you keep what I wrote in mind, the end result of building a helicopter will end up looking more convincing -irrespective of whether it is science fiction or supposed to be near-future/ contemporary military. Of course anybody who decides to build a helicopter is free to do this in whatever way he or she pleases. As usual with posts like this I am merely expressing my view, hoping that some of you may be able to use my advice to your advantage.

Building a fictional helicopter in some respects is a different game than building a model of a real helicopter. I normally do the latter and don't really have to think about where the rotor goes and where to put the exhaust; the real helicopter's designers have done all of that for me and I can simply stick to planning like I do for aircraft. However, having some sort of idea in mind of what your helicopter will look like before you start building might help you avoid some of the issues I described above.

I'll leave you with a picture of one of the few fictional helicopters that I myself built and which formed the basis for Aleksander Stein's SH-78, the HH-78 Gannet, both subject of an earlier post on this blog. I applied all of the things I discussed when building it, leading some people to question whether it is in fact a model of a real helicopter.

Happy building!

sniper rifles

2010-06-30T09:54:00.001-07:00

Pete Corp has built a very cool sniper rifle that, though it's not quite minifig-scale, is surprisingly compact considering the amount of detail that has managed to pack into it. He didn't specify what type it's supposed to be, but it looks like an Accuracy International Artic Warfare to me. The photography is also excellent, though according to the photo's description on flickr, it's due to the fact that the builder was lacking some parts in black. My only gripe is that the scope is a tad tad too short, but building realistic weapons at this scale is no easy feat, so my hat is off to Pete.

Meanwhile, an obviously very talented builder by the name of Giovanni Tuzzi (apparently relatively new to the flickr scene) has been working on a life-size Dragunov sniper rifle. Life-size weapons built out of LEGO bricks seem to be one of the more popular things that people choose to build when it comes to military-themed creations, but this one really stands out to me. It's hard to tell that it's not real at first glance, and upon close inspection it's accurate down to just about every last detail.

It's contest time!

2010-06-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

The deadline for the flickr military build contest has now passed and the judges are in the process of deciding who are the winners and runners-up in the contest. We've had some great entries and it's not an easy job, but we hope to get it done soon.

Those of you who haven't yet had enough of building military stuff or perhaps were unable to finish an entry for the military contest might be interested to know that tank builder imagelego has announced his second tank building contest. He is happy to accept a fairly wide selection of vehicles as a tank, but you should check out the rules yourself.

Imagelago will be judging the contest with the help of Aaron Patrick Morse, Daniel Siskind (aka. Brickmania) and myself. There is a prize to be won that I'm sure any LEGO military builder will have some use for: set 7595, Army men on Patrol, as well as a selection of Brickarms. The deadline is still fairly far away on the 15th of August, so there's plenty of time to build something nice.

Happy building!

Project Intrepid aircraft

2010-05-28T05:34:00.001-07:00

It's not my habit to write blog posts solely about stuff I do. In fact, It's not my really a habit to write blog posts full stop, which is not at all useful for somebody who has a blog... I am trying to make up for it by writing lengthy blog posts though.

One of the reasons why I haven't been blogging much lately and haven't been commenting much on other people's MOCs is that I've been very busy building myself. A few months ago I built a model of an FM-1 Wildcat, a WW-II carrier-based aircraft fighter used by the US Navy.

I'd been thinking about building a minifig-scale fighter aircraft for months when I finally built this. The reason why I didn't build one sooner was that I felt that it would be too difficult to add all the features I like, such as a working cockpit canopy and sufficient space to seat a pilot and a retractable undercarriage, on something this small. Part of the reason for building the Wildcat was that like many other US Navy WW-II aircraft, it was powered by a nice and big Radial engines. The main reason why US Navy aircraft had radial engines was because these engines were less prone to overheating when idling on an aircraft carrier deck than the water-cooled engines used in many land-based fighters, such as the Spitfire or P-51 Mustang, which require air to move through their radiators in order to stay cool. The advantage for building LEGO aircraft is that the size of the radial engine means that the aircraft's fuselages are fairly wide and since minifigs are fat this makes finding space for a pilot a lot easier.

Project Intrepid
With the Wildcat I finally had my own little fighter. What I didn't know at the time was that my regular collaborator Ed Diment (a.k.a. Lego Monster) had exciting plans of his own that involved naval aircraft. After having built his amazing model of HMS Hood he had set his sights for something a bit bigger: USS Intrepid, a minifig scale US Navy WW-II aircraft carrier. It's currently still very much a work in progress, but I'm sure I'll be blogging about it more in the future. Just to give you an idea, here's a (trick) picture showing the hulls of HMS Hood and USS Intrepid under construction side-by-side as well as Ed's wife ( Mrs. Monster, obviously).

You should also keep in mind that the flight deck is wider and longer than the hull and sits 45 plate widths above the water line. This is a big project! Ed obviously has his hands full building the ship and after having seen my Wildcat, he asked me whether I was willing to design and help build the aircraft for it. I was. I have built a few other things since, but WW-II aircraft building has taken up much of my time spent on LEGO-building ever since. Ed is modelling USS Intrepid as she appeared in early 1945. At that time she carried four types of aircraft: F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair fighters, SB2C Helldiver dive-bombers and last but not least TBF Avenger torpedo-bombers.

During WW-2 USS Intrepid served in the Pacific fleet. Navy aircraft used over the Pacific used three basic colour schemes. Early in the war most aircraft were pale blue on top (probably best represented by LEGO sand blue) and light grey on the lower surfaces. In 1943 a tri-clour scheme was introduced, with white under-surfaces, dark blue on top and blueish grey on the sides and the tailfin. In late 1944 aircraft started to be painted in dark blue overall. It is very likely that many aircraft aboard Intrepid in 1945 were painted in the latter scheme. Unfortunately the LEGO parts selection in dark blue is very limiting (few invert slopes and hinges, for instance), which makes building an aircraft in dark blue overall a difficult proposition. Since aircraft in the older tri-colour scheme generally weren't repainted and hinges and other special parts are easy to get in white or blueish grey, I decided to build all of the aircraft in this scheme.

TBF Avenger
I decided to start with the Avenger. I've long had a soft spot for this type. It looks ungainly, but was immensely capable. As I wrote a few days ago, I tend to plan building my aircraft and one of the things I look at while planning are what parts I reckon will be difficult. On the Avenger I suspected that the canopy would be tricky as well as the unique wing-fold mechanism.

Building the canopy and gun turret involved some pretty serious compromises. The real aircraft can be crewed by as many as four people, a pilot in the forward cockpit, a radio operator in the aft cockpit, a turret gunner (guess where he sits) and a bombardier in the aft fuselage. In practice the roles of bombardier and radio operator were often done by a single person, but fact of the matter is, I only have space for the pilot on my model -and only with the cockpit canopy open.

Grumman devised a unique wing-folding mechanism called the 'sto-wing' for many of its shipboard aircraft. The outer wing panels swivel such that they end up flanking the aft fuselage. Allegedly the founder of the company, Leroy Grumman, worked out the geometry in his office one day using a paperclip and an eraser. I have built sto wings before, but on the Avenger the mechanism was complicated by the location of the undercarriage (in the wings) and by having to have the mechanism in the wing itself (rather than in an engine nacelle). The same is true of the Wildcat, but its wings are tiny and that means the construction doesn't have to be as sturdy as for the much larger wings of the Avenger. Fortunately, the Avenger's wings are also quite thick and after a few revisions things worked.

F4U Corsair
After I finished the Avenger, I turned my attention to the F4U, aka. the 'bent-wing wonder'. Powerful engines require a big propeller. The Corsair's designers came up with an interesting way of making sure that the propeller cleared the deck: rather than giving their plane long undercarriage legs, they had the inboard sections of the wings slope down at an angle and the outboards sections up, with the undercarriage legs attached at the lowest point.

Unsurprisingly, getting this shape right whilst still having enough space for the wheels to retract was the biggest challenge when building this model. Beyond that it was largely trouble-free. the cockpit canopy was a direct copy of the canopy I designed for the Wildcat. I also built a small flight deck tractor and some deck crew to go with it.

As you can see, the outer wing panels on the Corsair fold up for storage aboard carriers, which was easy to do on my model.

A6M3 Zero-Sen
Ed and I agreed a long time ago that Intrepid wouldn't be complete without at least one Japanese aircraft ready to dive down on it. My biggest question was: which one? After looking at a fair few pictures I decided to build the most famous of them all, a version of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen, also known simply as the 'Zero' or 'Zeke'.

Early and late model Zeros had rounded wing-tips. I chose to build a A6M3, with square wing-tips. The parts that are usually difficult on aircraft models are the undercarriage and the cockpit canopy. The undercarriage is simple; sits in the wings and retracts inwards. The opening cockpit canopy is once again simply a variation on the design I used on the Wildcat. Land-based Zeros were often painted dark green with light grey under-surfaces, but because the parts selection in dark green is even more limited than in dark blue, I chose to build the model in grey, similar to the colour scheme usually worn my Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft flown from aircraft carriers. The build went very smoothly, without any significant difficulties.

SB2C Helldiver
The same cannot be said about building the Helldiver. The real Helldiver had a lot of teething problems when it entered service: it was unstable, unreliable and suffered structural failures. the aircraft was so unpopular at first that it received a number of unflattering nicknames such as 'The Beast' and 'Son of a Bitch, 2nd Class'. I wasn't looking forward to building this model. I think the real-world aircraft looks ungainly and odd and I figured that building one out of LEGo would be problematic. When I started building it I knew there were several difficulties I needed to solve. The Helldiver has two sliding canopies, for instance, and an internal weapons bay smack in the middle of the fuselage where the wings are attached to it. Normally I try to build that area out of several overlapping plates, to give the aircraft sufficient structural strength. This was further complicated by the location of the landing gear in the leading edge of the wing, which meant that there wasn't much room there for structural bits.

The end result is reasonably sturdy although the fuselage can flex a bit and the space inside the weapons bay is a bit smaller than I would have liked. The canopies on my model are of a similar design to the canopy of the Avenger, which unfortunately means that there is no room for crew inside with the canopies shut. Fortunately the wing folding mechanism on the Helldiver is fairly simple, with the end panels simply folding up. However, I did spend a fair bit of time fiddling with the length of the outer wing panels and the location of the hinges to get them to fit properly.

F6F Hellcat
Before I give the erroneous impression that things always go to plan, it's time to introduce the F6F Hellcat, yet another Grumman product. Having built the other aircraft I figured that building the Hellcat would be smooth sailing. I figured that the biggest problem with the Hellcat would be the central section of the wings and fuselage. The Hellcat had a sto-wing, the undercarriage retracts into the wings and the wings sit at an awkward angle. As I was building the aircraft I realised that I was right about identifying the difficult bits. However, the solution that I came up with soon turned into a major pain.

The wings get their slight angle by mounting them to the fuselage using plate hinges. My LEGO version of the sto-wing also uses plate hinges and it seemed like a good idea to use the same set of plate hinges that were used to mount the wings for the sto-wing. A similar idea worked really well on my Fairey Swordfish. Unfortunately it was pretty much a disaster on the Hellcat because the position of the landing gear sits close to the hinge point of the wing. The wing didn't fit properly, leaving awkward gaps at the leading and trailing edges. It also sat at the wrong angle, when folded the aircraft was too wide and the landing gear itself also didn't work well. It frequently collapsed and the landing gear struts were too long. The rest of the aircraft was fine, but the whole thing was let down by the wing and undercarriage construction.

Ultimately I decided that the only thing I could do was to completely rebuild the wing centre section, with the actual wing connected to the fuselage with plate hinges and the outer section of the wings connected to the inner section with more plate hinges. It may sound like a wobbly construction, but it solved all the problems in one go, as it also gave me enough space to fix the landing gear.

All together now
After I completed the F6F, all four aircraft types for the air wing are done.

What is next is building them in larger quantities. Ed has already started building copies of the Avenger, which you can see here aboard a section of Intrepid that is still under construction. Together with my prototype, we have already got six of them.

We are thinking of the following numbers of aircraft

6 TBF Avengers (already completed)

6 F6F Hellcats

9 SB2C Helldivers

15+ F4U Corsairs

Obviously that still means a lot of work in the next months. It is likely that Ed and I will build copies of the Hellcats, much as we did with the Avengers. For the Corsair, however, I intend to make instructions. I will probably be sharing them with other users, which means that if any of you feel like having your own Corsair, in a few months time you will be able to build your own copy of my design.

Happy building!

Building scale models of aircraft in LEGO.

2010-05-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

I get asked how I build my aircraft so often that I decided to make it the subject of a post. It seems like a far better idea than me waffling somewhere in the comments on my photostream or in some discussion group.

Making a plan
I know that a lot of builders start with a bunch of more-or-less random parts or a nice connection between a few of them and fiddle around with those until they find a shape they like, at which point they decide what it is that they'll build. I don't build like that. I know exactly what I'll build before I start and I often know how I'll build it in quite a lot of detail. I look at pictures of the real aircraft already thinking of how to build it and I make a plan. The plan can include a number of things, but usually involves the following things

a drawing showing the dimensions of various parts of the aircraft

a design of how to recreate the shape of the wings

an idea of what the most difficult bits will be

How detailed the plan is and how much of it I work out on paper differs from aircraft to aircraft. The paper version can consist of a small sketch showing some of the dimensions- but sometimes is pretty elaborate. Here are some examples.

If you look closely you'll see quite a few aircraft and helicopters that I have already built, as well as a fire engine and a few planes I haven't built yet.
I'll now go over the three points on my list in a little more detail, to show a few tricks and the advantages of having them in a plan in the first place.

Working out the dimensions
For finding the dimensions, I tend to use a three-view drawing of the aircraft. I look up its length or wingspan, calculate to how many plate widths those lengths correspond and from that work out to how many studs a cm in the drawing corresponds. I might download and print the plans from the internet and scribble on the printout or use drawings in a book as the basis for my own little drawing. In any case, I like to have a piece of paper next to me when I build. Alexk-, whose F-22 I blogged little more than a week ago, does something similar, but takes a more high-tech approach. Here you see a drawing of the F-22 with a scale superimposed on top of it, showing to how many plate widths the aircraft corresponds.

The shape of the wings
I always spend a lot of time on getting the leading and trailing edges of a wings and the horizontal tail plane the proper angle. Because I tend to build wings using plates (as opposed to using bricks on their side) this usually means using wedge plates. In the last few years, LEGO have introduced a whole range of wedge plates with different angles and often these are enough.

For some aircraft. however, the angle of the leading edge doesn't correspond to anything LEGO make. In that case a bit more creativity is required. Sometimes it is possible to use plate-hinges in combination with different wedge plates to get the proper angle.

Mike Psiaki's F-22, which I also blogged last week also uses the technique, as do the models of the Eurofighter Typhoon built by several people, including my own.

A nice example of a plan, also for a Eurofighter, and with a similar wing design is John Lamarck's.

Sometimes using a little maths can come in handy. I promise not to go overboard on the equations this time, but the Pythagorean theorem can be very useful. It describes the relative lengths of the three sides of right-angled triangles. The sides of triangles with certain angles have integer lengths (phythagorean triples). These can be very useful, because using Pythagorean triples, you can make really sturdy triangles. One example is 3,4,5 (because 3²+4²=5², I did manage to sneak one equation in here after all).

In other words, the diagonal of a right-angled triangle with sides that are 3 and 4 studs long is exactly five studs long. I used this handy set of numbers to mount the complete wings of my A-7 Corsair at an angle.

Certainly in the latter case, the way I built the wing had a huge impact on how I built the entire plane. If I hadn't planned this, it would never have worked.

The difficult bits
My plan tends to include some ideas of which bits of the plane will be difficult to build and those are the parts I build first. For my Sea Harrier they were the cockpit section, nose landing gear and the jet intakes.

If you look at the completed model, you'll see that the bits that were already present in the work-in-progress picture are still there almost completely unchanged.

Similarly, for my Heinkel He-219 Uhu I started with the cockpit, radar antennae and the engine cowls.

Once the difficult bits are done, the rest of the build tends to be smooth and easy. Having a plan and knowing how big various parts have to be means I rarely rebuild parts of a MOC that I have already built. I also rarely start something that I don't finish.

I love it when a plan comes together!
The plans I drew before building my E-2C Hawkeye are among the more detailed I've done.

I worked out the dimensions, I designed the outline of the wings, I figured out how to build the nose section and the radome and how the aft fuselage would taper; all before putting any bricks together. If you look closely at the wings you'll see that I've also the technique of combining wedge plates to get the proper angle for the wings. When building it there were still a few things I needed to sort out, but I ended up sticking pretty close to the plan.

Even though it was built more than two years ago, the Hawkeye is still one of my most complicated models and I don't think I could have built it without a plan.

This is not me trying to tell any of you to do things my way. Everybody should build how they see fit. Obviously there are other approaches, but having built a few dozen aircraft models in the last few years alone, I find that this approach is what works best for me. Perhaps some of you can use some of my ideas to your advantage.

Happy building!

Dr. Spontaneous

2010-05-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

I was just looking through the LEGO Military group pool on flickr to see if I had missed anything, and was pleasantly surprised to discover a talented builder that I haven't heard of who goes by Dr. Spontaneous, so I'll be blogging a couple of fantastic vehicles that he posted a few days ago.

First up is the VDS Medium Adaptable Artillery Truck (which is apparently based on an older creation of his), complete with stabilizing support struts:

Of equal note is his VDS Advanced Infantry Fighting Vehicle, which sports an anti-RPG cage and room for three dismounts:

It's not often that builders are able to incorporate working features and an interior into creations while still keeping them compact enough to be able to pass for being minifig scale, and Dr. Spontaneous has done both with flying colors. Keep it up!

Victory Day

2010-05-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

PigletCiamek, yet another excellent builder from Poland, has built a cemetery for Soviet soldiers who were killed while fighting occupying German troops in Poland near the end of WWII - complete with a rusty T-34 perched on a monument - to commemorate the 65th celebration of Victory Day, which was observed this past Sunday on May 9 to mark the unconditional surrender of the German military and the end of the Third Reich. Similar to Victory in Europe Day (VE Day for short) that's observed in the West on May 8, Victory Day is observed in the East (albeit a day later, as the German surrender took place May 9 Moscow time), and is celebrated each day with the Victory Day Parade in Moscow.

My favorite part of the diorama itself is the former Soviet soldier in a wheelchair paying tribute to his fallen comrades, and the tilted part of the monument that the T-34 rests on is also an exceptionally nice detail.

Stealth

2010-05-11T03:52:00.000-07:00

The current flickr Lego Military build contest has a category dedicated to stealth technology. The category is intended for fictional designs, but I felt it might be a good idea to take a little look at some stealthy aircraft built in Lego by various people and to explain a bit more about stealth technology. I'll stick to aircraft for now, but the same technology can also be applied to helicopters and ships, for instance. There are a few things many people don't understand about stealth technology. It does not make an aircraft invisible to radar. What it does is reduce the distance over which a particular radar can detect the aircraft. Radar works by having a transmitter sending out radio waves. If an object is in the path of these radio waves, a small fraction of the waves is reflected and this can be picked up by a sufficiently sensitive receiver. Usually the transmitter and receiver use the same antenna.

A little mathematics
This is not your average blog post, because as a physicist and possibly a bit of a bore I now feel the need to introduce some mathematics -not because I want to scare the readers away, but because I do this sort of thing for fun and feel the mathematics are useful to illustrate the effect of stealth technology. The radar energy I_iper surface area that strikes the aircraft is inversely proportional to the square of the distance d from the transmitter.

E_o is the energy transmitted by the radar.

Similarly, the radar energy per surface area I_r that gets reflected back to the receiver is inversely proportional to the distance from the aircraft to the receiver squared multiplied by to the aircraft's Radar Cross-Section R and proportional to the aircraft's Radar Cross-Section R (typically given in m²). Combining this with the first equation gives:

The radar cross-section is what stealth is all about. It is a complicated function that depends on the shape of the aircraft and the direction from which it is seen, the material it is made of and the frequency of the radar and probably a few other things. Major contributors to the cross-section are the engine compressors and engine inlets, perpendicular surfaces on the airframe, edges such as the leading edges of the wings, externally carried weapons, and not surprisingly the aircraft's own radar antenna.

The last equation tells you the following: if the target aircraft is twice as far away, the energy that gets back to the radar is 2⁴=16 times as small. In the real world the receiver will be picking up all kinds of radio waves, for instance background noise and reflections from birds or radar reflections from the ground. Signals processors and fancy computer algorithms can help to isolate the reflected waves from an aircraft from all this clutter, but there is a limit to I_r below which a reflection from an aircraft will not be detected. This limit obviously sets the maximum distance at which the radar can detect a target of a given radar cross-section. The last equation also shows that if a radar can only just detect an aircraft with a given value for R at, say, 100 km, reducing the value of R by a factor 10,000 (=10⁴) will mean that the maximum detection range drops to only 10 km. While radar stations with a 200km spacing between them would be enough to detect an aircraft in the former case, an aircraft with a radar-cross-section that is 10,000 times lower can easily slip through the gaps.

Of course, a factor of 10,000 is a pretty big deal. The cross-section can be lowered using a combination of two different approaches. An aircraft (or ship) can be coated with purpose-designed materials or structures that absorb rather than reflect much of the radio waves that strike it. The aircraft can also be shaped such that radio waves that strike it are reflected away from the direction of the transmitter/receiver. Obviously, for building a LEGO stealth aircraft, this is the factor that matters.

The first stealthy aircraft
One of the first aircraft specifically designed with features to reduce the radar cross-section was the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a high-flying reconnaissance aircraft used by the US Air Force from the 'sixties to the 'nineties. The leading edges of the wings incorporated structures designed to absorb radar. The wide 'chines' along the forward fuselage were there for aerodynamic reasons, but also decreased R.

Lockheed Blackbird by Lego Monster

The vertical tail fins were canted inward to prevent them from being perpendicular to the wing. The cones in the intakes were fitted for aerodynamic reasons as well, but also served to cover the engine compressors. Unfortunately all the efforts ultimately had little effect, however, because chemicals sprayed into the exhausts to prevent contrails from forming caused the massive wake of the aircraft to be visible to radar!

Full-blown stealth
Unlike the Blackbird, reducing the radar cross-section was of paramount importance in another aircraft designed by Lockheed, the F-117A Nighthawk. This was designed with one mission in mind: slipping undetected through enemy defences and bombing high-value targets with pin-point accuracy. The engines are buried deep inside the fuselage and the intakes are covered by grids (which appear as solid surfaces to radars). Because a radar antenna is a fantastic radar reflector, it didn't have one! The aircraft's shape was chosen such that most of the radar energy that strikes it is reflected in fairly narrow beams (spikes in the radar cross-section) away from the radar. Because computer programs at the time could not yet accurately predict how radio waves are reflected by curved surfaces, the shape was made up of a combination of flat areas, leading to a weird faceted look.

F-117A Nighthawk by Mad Physicist

The aircraft was covered in special radar-absorbing coatings and its laser-guided weapons were carried internally. F-117As served with great success in the Gulf War of 1991, but by the end of the century the aircraft was showing its age and a single F-117 was shot down over Serbia in 1999, possibly because the aircraft flew more-or-less the same route for several days in a row and was actually spotted visually. All F-117s have now been retired.

Stealth, the next generation
At the time of the shoot-down, new and weird shapes were already flying. The USAF had taken delivery of 21 B-2 Spirit bombers (of which I have yet to see a decent LEGO version) and was developing its new air-combat fighter: the F-22 Raptor. The F-117s odd-ball shape seriously affected the aircraft's aerodynamic performance, but by the early 'nineties computer technology had finally caught up with the physics, and it was possible to build stealthy aircraft with smoother shapes and much higher performance.

F-22 Raptor by Alexk

The F-22 still has a number of features in common with the F-117. Large parts of the fuselage still consist of flat panels, but they now blend together more smoothly. Its intakes are not square (but trapezoidal), reducing reflections from perpendicular surfaces. The intake ducts are very long and curved, minimising returns from the engine compressors. While it can carry weapons externally, most of its weapons are carried in internal weapons bays. A final concession to stealthiness is something called 'planform alignment'. Since edges are large contributors to the radar cross-section, designers of stealth aircraft often align the leading and trailing edges of the wings with those of the tail planes and inlet lips. There will only be a spike in the radar cross-section in a direction perpendicular to the edge and since most of the edges line up there will only be a few spikes.

F-22 Raptor by Mike Psiaki

Reducing the cross-section by a factor of 10,000 comes at a price. The B-2 and the F-22 are the most expensive combat aircraft ever built, at roughly $2 billion and $200 million per aircraft, respectively.

Most nations cannot afford to design and operate aircraft that are this expensive and most modern European fighter aircraft (Eurofighter and Rafale), the American Super Hornet and also the PAK-FA currently under development in Russia are designed to have a reduced radar cross-section where it matters most: from the front.

There is much more to say about stealth technology. I've only talked about reducing visibility to radar for aircraft. Many modern ships have superstructures that avoid perpendicular surfaces to reduce their visibility to radar. An other important aspect for aircraft is their jet exhaust. It is much hotter than the surrounding air, which means it can be visible to Infra-Red detectors. The F-117 and the F-22 have rectangular engine exhausts instead of more normal round ones to allow the hot exhaust gasses to cool down more quickly.

If you were to chose to build a Stealth aircraft for the competition, there are a couple of things you might want to keep in mind:

the engines ought to be buried deep inside the fuselage to hide their compressors

planform alignment: leading and trailing edges are often parellel

weapons are carried internally

the shape often uses large flat surfaces

you should avoid perpendicular surfaces, so tailfins, for instance, should be at an angle

Check out Magnus Lauglo's 'Black Arrow' to see an awesome example of a fictional stealth aircraft.

Black Arrow by Magnus Lauglo

Happy building!

the best of nnenn

2010-04-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

Tragically, the reclusive builder known only as nnenn to most of his was killed in a car crash earlier this month (see this post on The Brother's Brick). The guys over at TBB are paying their respects to him by blogging their favorite creations of his, so I thought that it'd be the least I could do to blog a couple of my favorite of his military-themed creations.

His F-16 Fighting Falcon is always what comes to mind when I think of nnenn's work in the military theme. His tendency to build sleek and studless aircraft and spacecraft never failed to impress.

Of equal note is his near-future derivative of the Eurofighter Typhoon, which was his last military-themed creation. It's quite possibly his best, as well, considering the many intricate details that he managed to incorporate into the creation while still keeping it very clean in appearance.

F-16 Fighting Falcon

2010-04-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

A very detail-oriented builder, Mike Psiaki has been tweaking his F-16 Fighting Falcon for some time now. Though it's still a work in progress, I think it's safe to say that it's sufficiently developed to blog here. The new canopy from the Atlantis sets works perfectly for the cockpit, and the neon green works remarkably well, as fighter cockpits often have green glows to them from their heads-up displays. Otherwise, there are lots of interesting angles that doubtlessly have been achieved by only by very intricate SNOT work, but the payoff is that the model resembles its real-life counterpart down to every last angle. It's easily one of the best models that I've seen lately, and is all the more cool to see as the F-16 is my favorite fighter.

LEGO Military Build Challenge #3: Rescue!

2010-04-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

As usual at the end of a build challenge, I bring you my own overview of the various submitted models. It's a bit shorter than the previous two, quite simply because we had fewer entries. I'm hoping this means that everybody had plenty of ideas of their own rather than that we've chosen a poor subject.

It certainly got creative juices flowing with cm946. His entry for this challenge is probably also the most imaginative or weirdest depending on your point of view. I won't make any statements either way, it is called the Monkey Search and Reskewer, and according to the background story (for which you need to click the picture) was used to 'fend off abnormally large Sharks, of both the Sky and Sea varieties'.

Actually, I will make a statement: dude, I don't know what you've been sniffing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's illegal (only joking).

I wasn't sniffing anything other than a sea breeze when I got the idea for my own entry. In the last few months I took two trips to Den Helder in the North of The Netherlands, visiting the Royal Netherlands Naval College. Den Helder is the home base for the Dutch Navy's SH-14D Lynx helicopters, and that's what I decided to build.

One of their missions is Search-and-Rescue over the North Sea.

Necessity is the mother of invention. What do you do if a) your troops desperately need food or ammo and b) you don't ave any dedicated cargo aircraft or helicopters? Brickgeek's solution is the Osprey 1, a crop duster turned into a multi-purpose support aircraft.

Some of us may still be building HumVees, but my fellow blogger Chandler Parker is already looking forward to the HumVee's successor: the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, building an ambulance version.

Among other goodies it has working suspension and a cleverly constructed windscreen. It's also hard to beat the effective simplicity of a brick-built red cross logo.

For this challenge, Imagelego came up with a type of vehicle that I am sure neither Chandler or I thought of when we started the challenge -a recover tank. However, it's very fitting nonetheless and a very nice build. He builds tanks on a somewhat smaller scale than most military builders, but manages to make them more detailed than many larger vehicles I've seen over the years.

Good stuff. I'm hoping we'll get a few entries of this level for the combat engineering category of this year's build contest, although they'll make my task as a judge a bit harder.

We may not have had many entries this time around, but the very prolific Aleksander Stein apparently felt that he could make up for that just on his own by building multiple entries. The first is a wrecker version of a military truck.

I think this is the sort of vehicle that is often overlooked by LEGO military builders -part of the reason for the combat engineering category in the contest. Their utilitarian looks doesn't make them pretty, but Aleksander's truck definitely looks the part.
Like the US Military's HumVee, Aleksander's Dragoon vehicle comes in a whole variety of different versions. His second entry is an armoured ambulance version.

To top it all off, he's combined both vehicles in an action-packed diorama.

Awesome.

The American truck manufacturer Oshkosh is mostly known for builsing the HEMTT heavy tactical trucks for the US military as well as specialised vehicles for fire fighting and the construction industry. Bruno Vaiano's entry is a combination of both: the TFFT is an airport fire tender based on the HEMTT truck chassis.

Bruno reckons it is his best military MOC to date and I am inclined to agree.

From my own entry I hope it is obvious that I like helicopters, I'm very happy that we had a three helicopters as last-minute entries. Ninja Pilot's helicopter is called the SS 40 Griffin.

I love the colour scheme (reminiscent of the colours used by the Canadian Armed Forces) and the working doors in particular -no small feat on a minifig scale helicopter.

Babalas Shipyards took some time out from building his massiveWW II Fletcher class destroyer to build the RH-21 Black Swan, also built to minifig scale and featuring working sliding doors as well as a retractable undercarriage.

The final entry of this challenge is a model of the classic UH-60 Blackhawk byGravel Cruncher, a helicopter type that is also used for missions such as Combat Search and Rescue.

Many other people have built Black Hawks, but what is special about this one is how many minifigs it can fit in spite of its modest size.

In numbers this may not have been our most successful challenge, but we did get some nice entries out of it and I'd like to thank everybody who did go to the trouble of building something. Chandler and I will be announcing a next challenge after the current build competition ends.

Attention all builders

2010-03-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

M6 Crusader, now with instructions!

2010-03-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

More than a Year ago fellow LEGO builder Robin Chang, (aka. GreenLead) started a project called Alpha Company, a community of military builders all working together in the same fictional military unit. As part of this he started looking for military builders who could help out with designs for the various pieces of equipment for Alpha Company and their opponents (the FRC for short).

I agreed to design a truck and loosely based it on the US Army's Palletized Load System, which Robin decided to name the M6 Crusader. The idea was to have a standardised container design so that the same basic truck could be used for a number of different missions. The various builders participating in the project could design their own payloads.

Robin was very busy doing other things for a while, such as making instructions for the FRC's Ravager Jeep, designed by Aleksander Stein
( which we blogged a while ago), but after that he turned his attention back to the Crusader. We agreed to a redesign.

It carries a bigger load, is shorter overall, has new camouflage (dark green, reddish brown and dark blueish grey) and looks a lot more serious somehow.

After a lot of hard work, Robin has now finished the instructions for this model as well.

You can download them from the Alpha Company website. I think Robin has done a great job making the instructions for this. They are very clear and look very professional. In the process he also designed an alternative payload module, where the 'payload' consists of passengers. It too is included in the instructions.

I suspect that pretty soon Alpha Company will be launching a competition for their users to design their own modules. I already look forward to it.

A fist full of Hummers

2010-02-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I last wrote a post. Suffice to say I've been busy (building, and travelling). Furthermore there simply weren't all that many military MOCs in the last few weeks that tickled my fancy, apart from the ones Chandler already blogged.
That I am writing this post now is due to me seeing a very nice representation of a LEGO HMMWV built by legohaulic this morning. One could argue that the 'terrorist' being crushed by the model is a tad distasteful, but I like the vehicle. The grille is nice, I like that it has working suspension and I love the use of curved bricks to build the lip of the hatch in the back. They are small details, but add a lot to the model.

Legohaulic remarks:"I know that there are many LEGO versions of the HUMVEE out there that are almost identical." With many builders having tried their hand at building Hummers, it has become hard to build one that is obviously different, apart from changing the scale. Because of Legohaulic's model I decided to trawl flickr and brickshelf looking for Hummers and Humvees. There are a lot of models of civilian Hummers out there as well, but since this is a blog about military LEGO I'll focus on the military versions.

The HMMWV for High Mobility Military Wheeled Vehicle, known to troops as the HumVee, was designed in the late 'seventies as early 'eighties as a replacement for a range of different vehicles in use with the US Army. This included various development of the classic Jeep, but also a number of different light trucks and a wonderfully weird six-wheeled contraption known as the Gama Goat (I don't think I've seen one of those yet in LEGO). The vehicle was to have an exceptional ability to drive off-road and replacing light trucks meant that the vehicle was going to be considerably bigger than a Jeep. I doubt anybody would call the result pretty, but the trucks did the job. The US Army uses thousands of HumVees in a bewildering variety of types including fairly basic pick-up trucks, versions armed with anti-tank or surface-to-air missiles, long range patrol vehicles for special forces and ambulances. During the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan vehicles such as HumVees have proven very vulnerable to mines, improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades, leading to efforts to add more armour but also to finding replacement vehicles. Regardless, I think we can expect HumVees to remain in service for a long time still and to see many people try to build LEGO versions.

I think that Mike Yoder has influenced a lot of other builders with his 8-wide Hummer.

Some of the people who commented on Legohaulic's HumVee that there are a lot of people who seem to copy what other people have done. This seems to be the case for 8-stud-wide models in particular. I'm not going to post all the other 8-wide HumVees that I came across that were obviously inspired by Mike Yoder's, but they are numerous. Instead I'm going to focus on other 8-wide models that do manage to be different (and not suck while doing it).

Like LegoHaulic's HumVee, the 8-wide model by urthedead has working suspension.

Brickshelf user sfzdk also has an 8-wide model, which manages to be different once again.

(edit: I replaced a picture with a thumbnail, because the original is too large. Clicking the picture takes you to the brickshelf folder.)

Mike Psiaki acknowledges Mr Yoder's influence (and it is obvious in the construction of the chassis), but manages to give it his own twist by choosing to use aircraft windows that make it look much more like an up-armoured Heavy Hummer.

Obviously if you have different but roughly similarly skilled builders take on a similar subject, you'll end up with similar results. These models are all variations on a theme, perhaps, but you can see that much of the construction of these vehicles is very different, and yet they manage to look similar. Isn't LEGO wonderful? There are so many different ways of achieving a similar effect!

Now I'm going to turn towards different scales and I'll start with a tiny little model built by brickmania

It is only four studs wide, but it still manages to capture all the salient details.

For those of you who follow this blog or with whom I've discussed the issue on eurobricks (ad nauseam) it will be no surprise that I tend to opt for the smaller end of minifig scale. I think that 8 studs wide is a bit to much for a HumVee. The real vehicles are wide, without a doubt, but part of how wide they look is caused by the fact that the cab is fairly low and sits high above fairly chunky wheels. When I tried my hand at a minifig scale HumVee, I opted for six studs wide.

Unfortunately, in order to be able to fit at least a driver in there, it ended up with a cab that looks too tall.

Using my design as a starting point, channaher built his own six-wide HumVee and by using a few tricks (a plate here and there and some door rails) he managed to make it look much better.

Moving on towards a larger scale, for a long time I've been building cars to the slightly unusual scale of 1/22 (although I am pleased to see that it seems to be catching on!). On that scale HumVees end up being 12 studs wide.

To me the old-school technic tyres I used seemed made for this vehicle.

Showing that size matters, rabidnovaracer built a whopping 34-stud wide monster:

I am sure that there are some worthy and original models of LEGO Hummers out there that I overlooked (if you know some, please leave a comment), but I hope I have given you a nice overview of the various ways in which LEGO builders can make a box on wheels look interesting.

Black Arrow and Shrike B

2010-02-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

Magnus Lauglo, a rather prolific builder as of late, has been focusing on building aircraft for the past few months, and has added two new creations to his ever growing collection of vehicles. The Shrike B (an upgrade of the earlier Shrike) is a multirole fighter that is reminiscent of real-life trainers, and the Black Arrow is a sleek stealth UAV that's supposed to be a technology demostrator.

T-34

2010-02-09T11:27:00.000-08:00

Henrix Hoexbroe, a fantastic builder who typically builds microscale creations, has branched out to building in a larger scale with his 1:24 scale T-34. The model is exceptionally accurate, and is possibly the best LEGO T-34 that I've seen yet.

(Also, I've linked to the photo on flickr from the embedded photo itself, something that up until now I've been too lazy to do.)

LMBC #3: Rescue

2010-02-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

It has been a couple of months since we've held a build challenge, and I know that some of you all have been begging for more, so without adieu I'd like to announce the newest one, which centers around the concept of rescue.

I'm sure that the first thing that comes to mind for most of you all when you think of the concept of rescue is building scenes of troops helping others out of a sticky situation or springing them from an enemy prisoner-of-war camp, both of which would be acceptable entries, but use your imagination! Military ambulances, such as modified trucks, armored vehicles, or helicopters would be welcomed, or even microscale hospital ships (we don't expect anyone, except maybe the ever industrious Ed Diment or Babalas-Shipyards to churn out a minifig scale hospital ship within our set deadline). Another option that might not immediately come to mind is armored recovery vehicles. Such vehicles could even be incorporated into a diorama for a more dynamic presentation.

So, get brainstorming and I'm sure that you all will be able to come up with interesting entries, but make sure that they're directly related to the concept of rescue. You have until March 31 to build, photograph and post your entries here and discuss the build challenge here. Good luck, troops!

A very shiney Fortress

2010-01-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

Alex Schranz (aka. Orion Pax) has stunned a lot of people with his latest MOC, a minifig scale model of a the B-17 Flying Fortress, a WW-II classic.

It's not hard to see why. Almost the entire aircraft is built with metallic silver parts. Towards the end of WW-II the USAAF had a lot of aircraft that were left in natural metal finish, and the silver is a wonderful representation of this colour scheme. At a first glance, certainly from the angle seen in the picture above, it looks stunning.

My hat is off to Alex for giving this a try. Considering the limited selection of parts in this colour he had to pull out all the stops to get even close to the shape. Unfortunately, when seen from a lower angle it seems clear that what he was going for isn't (yet) possible, even for a man of his talent.

dropship from "Avatar"

2010-01-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this rendition of a dropship from the movie "Avatar" by Mike Psiaki quite a while ago, but to be honest it completely slipped my mind. So, now that I've remembered, here it is:

LAV-25

2010-01-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

ShockAndAwe, a skilled minifig customizer, has posted his first vehicle, a USMC LAV-25. It looks great to me, especially seeing as he built in it tan, a color that has a rather limited selection of parts. Be sure to check out the rest of the photos in the set for the creation on flickr.

MiG-29K

2010-01-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

Julius Dabrowa, a builder who, up until recently, has mostly dabbled in MLCAD designing, has built a microscale MiG-29K (NATO reporting name: Fulcrum-D), a carrier-based variant of the venerable fighter. As is visible in the photo, he's included folding wings just like the original, and numerous other details that can be better appreciated by viewing the photo set on flickr. While the cockpit could perhaps benefit from the use trans-clear or trans-smoke bricks, I admittedly kind of like the blue as it gives the creation a sort of old-school feel.

Combat Wombat

2010-01-12T15:53:00.001-08:00

"Combat Wombat" is the best name ever. 'Nuff said. (built by Shannon Ocean)

hunt the rats

2010-01-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

Karwik, a builder whose work I have only recently discovered and which seems to primarily focus on town-themed creations, has built what appears to be an allied sniper's view of a German soldier during WWII. He's combined depth of field and creative photography and editing to present a stunningly realistic impression of an all-too routine scene from that bloodiest of wars.

brown-water navy

2010-01-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

Fradel "Slice151" Gonzales has recently posted two brown-water naval vessels - a patrol boat and a hovercraft - that he built last year. Both are built in a near-futuristic style that's typical of Fradel's work and exibit an impressive level of detail. In particular I like the turret on the on back of the PB, which incorporates a minifig in a way that's reminiscent of a hardsuit, but there are many interesting details throughout both creations. The hovercraft is also well armed and has a roomy interior, perfect for transporting a squad of naval infantry for an amphibious assault.

My favourite models of 2009

2009-12-31T02:26:00.000-08:00

It's the end of the year; time for lists of people who died, best songs, and new years' resolutions! I have a list of my own: military Lego models of 2009 that impressed the hell out of me.

Obviously it is no coincidence that quite a few of these models have been featured on this blog before. It probably also is no coincidence that many of them came out of this year's flickr Lego military group build competition because it brought out the best in many builders. Apparently there's nothing like the prospect of a prize and beating somebody else to get people to put a little extra effort into their models. I'm already looking forward to 2010's contest.

There's no beating about the bush, in my opinion the most impressive military model that I've seen this year was my friend Ed Diment's Vulcan bomber, the subject of the very first post on this blog was Ed Diment's Vulcan bomber.

Ed built it in record time for an exhibit celebrating 100 years of British flight at the Manchester museum of science and technology (MOSI). It has functionality, great camouflage, is very detailed and huge. Size does matter.

I myself have not built as many military models this year as in the last two, but I do have a personal favourite and was well pleased and even pleasantly surprised with how it turned out: my Sea Harrier FRS.1. It was also built for the exhibit at MOSI.

I already mentioned the military build contest. One of the most hotly contested categories was WW-2 aircraft. I was well chuffed that my own B-26 Marauder finished 1st, because both the numbers two and three were impressive and I'll post pictures of them both. The 2nd place was for the B-25H Mitchell built by Dan Siskind, the creative brain behind Brickmania.

The third place was for Ed Diment's Spitfire. I suspect the only thing that kept him from getting the first place was the slightly misplaced cockpit canopy

According to the judges' comments it was a very close race between the numbers 1,2 and 3.

Mainman produced a wonderful model of the Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACs for the microscale category of the contest and ended up winning it. The shape is amazingly accurate for such a small model and I felt it was great to see a model of a somewhat unusual aircraft.

Another winner, this time in the modern armour category, was Daniel Zayac's excellent Merkava MBT. It's only slightly larger than minifig scale, but has an amazing amount of detail and really captures the Merkava's utilitarian look.

Talking about impressive tanks, when I saw the next model on The Brothers Brick, my jaw dropped. It's a model of a WW-2 Tiger tank built by mad_a0, a builder who I hadn't heard from before or since. Man, where are you? I want more of this.

Magnus Lauglo is probably mostly known for his armour, although he has been building jets and helicopters and a few years ago was big in the Lego castle scene. He has built a lot of nice models in the last year, but one that stood out to me was his Sealion Assault Hovercraft, mainly because it's such an unusual vehicle that nonetheless looks convincing and because of the excellent camouflage.

Another very prolific builder is Aleksander Stein. I had a hard time picking one of his models, but I chose his EH-191 Whirlwind. It too has great camouflage and I love the way he has shaped the sides of the fuselage. If I ever build an NH-90, I know whose helicopter I'll be looking at.

I've blogged the next helicopter before, but like it so much that I don't mind posting a second picture of Steven Marshall's Ka-50 'Black Shark".

Last but not least I want to mention a builder who appeared on flickr only about a year ago Babalas Shipyards. He does exactly the sort of things I like and keeps getting better with every new model he builds. One of his latest models really hit the spot because I've developed an interest in WW-2 US Navy carrier-based aircraft. he built a wonderful little model of an SBD Dauntless

This list is op course completely subjective and I am sure that I've overlooked some excellent and worthy models while compiling this list. I'm also heavily biased towards models of real military equipment as opposed to things people make up (although a few did make it onto my list), so don't feel left out if your own best model didn't make it.

I look forward to seeing what new military models the next year will bring. I've already started planning for a few myself.

All the best for 2010.
Ralph

War Pig

2009-12-22T15:16:00.000-08:00

I've been working on the M1A3, a near-future version of the Abrams main battle tank (MBT), for quite a while now, and I think that it turned out nicely if I do say so myself. It may not be completely accurate, but I built it as an upgrade of the real thing to give myself some room for artistic license. I'm happy with it, at any rate, and that's what matters in my opinion. See here for its photo set on flickr.

Contest announcement: Air/space craft Carriers

2009-12-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

In the last months we've had two build challenges on the Flickr Lego military group. (You may have seen the round up of the last one here). This time we're doing something a bit different. Slice151 is running a small contest with a theme that I myself really like: Air/space craft Carriers. Unlike the challenges, this one will come with winners and prizes. Check out Slice's full announcement on flickr.

[insert witty title here]

2009-12-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Captain Eugene has built a minifig scale M3 Stuart light tank, and has used the chassis to build a Howitzer Motor Carriage M8. As a bonus, he has also build a larger version of the latter as well. Though all three vehicles are exceptionally well done, I find the two minfig scale ones particularly impressive as I know just how difficult it can be to build in that scale and still manage to integrate working features. (Via the Brothers Brick.)

Island hopping with Babalas Shipyards

2009-12-09T10:10:00.001-08:00

We don't blog a ship on this blog every day. (In fact we don't blog every day, full stop, but never mind.)

The appropriately named builder, Babalas-Shipyards, has posted pictures of a very interesting craft: a so-called "Landing Craft Support Large", a craft used by the US Navy in WW-II to provide fire support to amphibious landing forces in the Pacific. Obviously it was intended for the 'Fire Support' challenge on the flickr military build group, but it wasn't finished in time. No problem, I'll blog it anyway.

It's an impressively large build and very detailed, although by the builder's own admission some of the parts were a bit rushed and improvised. That wasn't at all obvious to me. It looks great and it is a very interesting choice of model.

To take in all the details and the clever construction used for the main bridge, among other things, I recommend you take a look at more pictures in the full photoset on flickr.

'Fire support' challenge round up

2009-12-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

In the last two months the flickr military group has been running it's second challenge, titled 'Fire Support'. Obviously you can look at the discussion on the group, but as I did last time I've listed the entries here and give my opinion and some background info.

Erogwin was the first to come to the troops' rescue with his F36B Gryphon

According to his description is a heavy fighter used for close air support. At first this struck me as a somewhat unusual combination. Then again, the USAF nowadays even uses B-52 bombers for close-air-support, so why not?

A more traditional entry is the MA-(L) 'Sifter', by Mdrn-mrvls, a towed artillery piece

He built more than just the gun, it's part of a nice little diorama and I can only recommend that you check out the full photset to appreciate all the details.

Magnus Lauglo entered the fray with his Forktail attack aircraft seemingly inspired by jets such as the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Like the A-10, which is more popularly as the 'Warthog', Magnus' jet also has a nickname:'Killer Duck'. Some of the names you guys come up with are at least as creative as the models themselves.

The model has some lovely angles, in particular on the tail and in the way the cockpit canopy has been built. Magnus has taken a whole
series of pictures showing it from different angles.

Wiseman_Lego chose to go for a helicopter, the suitable chunky looking 'Nh-95 Plus' Special operations gunship. In common with real-life special ops helicopters it has some weird-protruberances fitted to the nose. However, I don't think I've ever seen a special ops. helciopter packing quite this much heat.

There's no kill like overkill!

It's rare to see something built by Greenlead and his entry, the Non-Line-Of-Sight Launch System had me puzzled. Fortunately he provided a handy link to a wikipedia page giving details of a similar system designed for the real world. It's a modular missile launcher that can be mounted on just about any vehicle or ship.

Greenlead has made instructions for this design and using those
Mickomaley has recreated the model in the brick.

I personally am not familiar with Warhammer (other than knowing of its existence), so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of cm946's Vendetta gunship from the Warhammer40k universe. Apparently it's a transport but with enough fire-power to support the troops it carries.

Robbyem has built something that can best be described as a low-rider half-track (albeit without tracks). It's a somewhat odd but futuristic looking combination and the effect of a missile being launched using a large transparent orange flame part looks cool (or should that be hot?).

The next entry was rather more conventional. Pmjredsox's U-902 Ferret is a helicopter reminiscent of the US Army's AH-1 HueyCobra attack helicopters and that's a good thing as far as I am concerned. Sadly there's only a single picture. I wouldn't have minded seeing other angles as well.

Pdragon> has built a vehicle, the One-Winged Angel with -as the name suggests- a very unusual configuration. I gave him a hard time about how real-world flying craft are usually largely symmetric (there have been a few assymetric aircraft in history, but they were never a success).

Still, it's nicely constructed.

One of the things that came to my mind with 'Fire Support' was mortars. So far we've seen a fair few really high-tech entries, but in practice lowly mortars are still in wide-spread use. Their lighter weight compared to proper artillery means that they can be carried by infantry units, although it's not uncommon for them to be transported using a vehicle such as the one built by legosim
M9982-FS 80mm Mortar Carrier

Rossart12 has gone for a classic, the Rockwell OV-10 Bronco. The real aircraft was designed specifically as a light attack/ counter-insurgency aircraft and saw operational service with the US Military from Vietnam through to the Gulf War of 1991. It's still in military operational service elsewhere in the world and in the US still fights battles of a very different nature: it is used as a spotter aircraft for fighting forest fires.

Ross' model has such goodies as a retractable undercarriage and moveable control surfaces. Spot on!

For this challenge Vaiano has produced two truly excellent entries. 'To Carlie with Love' is a version of a WW-II vintage M3 half track modified with a turret with four M2 Browning machine guns. Vehicles like this were used during the Korean War for defence against enemy aircraft. In practice the firepower also came in handy against ground targets and if Vaiano is to be believed these trucks were still in use in Vietnam.
Halftrack guntruck

His second entry is a hill-top fire base.

If customised minifigs are your thing, I suggest you to take a closer look at this.

Snuffwuzz >.< has defied the limitations of Lego Digital Designer to produce two CAD-models of real-life artillery used by the British Army. The first is an AS90 Self Propelled Gun

The second model is the one I like best. It represents an M270 multiple-launch rocket system, also known as the 'Grid Square Removal System'.

edit: Apparently my wish was granted before I even expressed it. Check out the brick-built Challenger.

My own entry is a model of a US Army HumVee modified for use by special forces.

Vehicles like this were used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq to penetrate deep behind enemy lines.

Brickgeek27 has what he himself calls a 'cute entry'. I'm not sure whether cute and military mix very well, but I'll leave you to decide. I myself quite like the minifig.

I could blabber on about the next entry. Aleksander_se has built the massive Koalitsjia "Blackbear" Self-Propelled Artillery piece. As usual with Aleks' builds it isn't based on a particular real-world piece of armour, but it looks as though it was.

It's full of amazing details, as usual. Check out the interior, for instance.

edit: as usual reality is stranger than fiction. Imagelego informed me that it is actually based on a real vehicle!

Fellow Dutchman Wouwie13 found some inspiration in my own model of a Predator UAV and built a very convincing model of the latest development, the ominously named MQ-9 Reaper.

Experiments with armed unmanned aircraft were done as long ago as WW-II, but it's in the recent war on terrorism that they have first seen widespread service.

DarthNick has entered two versions of basically the same vehicle, which he calls the Coyote. The first version is armed with two surface-to-air missiles.

the second version carriers surface-to-surface missiles.

It's a nice little vehicle, but I can't help wondering whether the crew wouldn't be burned to a crisp by missiles launching right over the tops of their heads. Ouch!

Brickmonkey presented an LDRAW version of his AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopter. This type of helicopter is used by the US Army's Special Operations Aviation Regiment 'Nightstalkers' to support troops like Delta Force or the US Army rangers. Perhaps you've seen them in action in Black Hawk down. Due to bricklink orders not arriving in time he was late posting the pictures of the brick-built version, but since I prefer real bricks over virtual ones I decided to put pictures of the real model in this write-up.
BrickMonkey

John Lamarck was another builder somewhat late to the party due to Bricklink orders not arriving, but the model was well worth the wait. John presents his Mil Mi-31 "ЛАСКА" (Russian for Weasel) as a near-future replacement for the current Ka-50 'Hokum'. Some of you may find Megabloks offensive, but this mix with proper LEGO works well and I have to admit that they apparently make some parts that I wouldn't mind LEGO making.

edit: I got fiction and reality a bit mixed up here. John actually presents his Mi-31 as a replacement for the Mi-28.

We haven't had as many entries as last time, but some really nice models came out of it nonetheless and I'll take quality over quantity any day. It'll be a while before we do another challenge quite like this, because next up we'll have a challenge that'll be a bit more specific. An announcement will follow shortly.

fire for effect

2009-11-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

Magnus Lauglo and Aleksander Stein, both regulars on this blog, have built two very different but both mind-blowing awesome creations for the LEGO Military Build Challenge: Fire Support.

Magnus has built an as-of-yet unnamed (Magnus is accepting suggestions for names here) multirole fighter (multirole fighters are capable of ground attack, and thus are fall into the category of fire support) inspired by real-life multirole fighters such as the American F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-35 Lightning II, and the Swedish JAS-39 Gripen. While aesthetically it's quite reminiscent of the Gripen and sports a camo scheme that reminds me of the Gripen's predecessor, the Viggen, it incorporates a VTOL system that's very similar to that of the Lightning II. To fully appreciate the amount of detail and working features that Magnus has packed into the relatively small fighter, I encourage you to browse its photo set on flickr.

Aleks, on the other hand, opted to build a self-propelled howitzer inspired by the prototype Koalitsiya-SV, an artillery piece based upon the Msta-S, the primary self-propelled howitzer of the Russian military. As always, he has managed to fuse a piece of real-life hardware and an impressive, techobabble-laced writeup into a very believable finished product. His attention to detail really shows through on this model, so be sure to browse the photo set for the creation on flickr.

Smooth operator

2009-11-07T01:52:00.000-08:00

Steven Marshall -already known by LEGO lovers worldwide as the builder of amazingly realistic studless models and crisp photography- turns his attention to a new topic: a military helicopter.

The model represents the Ka-50 Black Shark (known to NATO as the Hokum). It is an amazingly detailed model that stands out not just because of being studless, but also because of the smoothness of all the shapes. It is not immediately clear from the picture, but this is actually a render. Steven has already announced that he is also building the model in real bricks and I already look forward to seeing it. Excellent work.

Building camouflage

2009-11-04T10:49:00.000-08:00

I would like this blog to be about more than just nice military MOCs we spot on the internet, so every once in a while I'll bore you with something a bit more 'editorial'. This time I'd like to share my thoughts and some tips and tricks on building convincing camouflage for LEGO vehicles, helicopters and aircraft.

What is camouflage?
According to the free dictionary camouflage is:

The method or result of concealing personnel or equipment from an enemy by making them appear to be part of the natural surroundings.

There are two main ways in which this is done: by giving it a colour or colours that match those of the surroundings and by using those colours such that its contours are obscured. Examples of the former are painting a tank that is used in a desert in tan or painting an air superiority fighter in a more-or-less uniform grey. For LEGO building this is fairly easy, although it may be hard to find all the parts you need in a single colour! However, if the surroundings have multiple different colours or you expect to use your vehicle in different surroundings, painting a vehicle in a single uniform colour may not be the most effective. A forest, for instance, tends to have different greens and browns that are lighter and darker depending on how dense the foliage is in any given spot. Having a uniformly green APC standing in front of it might make it stand out rather than blend in, because of the straight lines that form its edges and a general absence of straight edges in a real forest. The various coloured patches on the vehicle should obscure the vehicle's contours. Check out these pictures of real-world camouflage.

A US Marine corps AAV-7 amphibious tractor

A US Navy F/A-18C Hornet painted to represent a Russian Su-27 'Flanker'

An actual Russian Su-27 'Flanker'

Camouflage is not random
Recreating this effect in a LEGO model might seem easy. After all, building something in lots of colours has the wonderful advantage that if you don't have a particular part in one colour, you can easily use another. However, simply taking a few piles of parts in a number of colours and picking the parts you need at random isn't going to produce a very convincing result. You see, camouflage isn't random. In order to have a vehicle blend into the background, different colours are used in a few fairly large patches rather than in lots of small ones. The size of the patches and how jagged the demarcations between the colours are have to be matched to what the background looks like from a range of distances. In the real world this is increasingly done using mathematics, (fractal geometry in particular), but that may be a bridge too far for the purpose of this blog post. So, how can you build multi-coloured camouflage in LEGO?

Limit the number of colours to four at most
The first step in recreating this sort of effect in LEGO is choosing the colours. Back when I was a child, LEGO used to come in black, white, grey, red, yellow and blue -not enough for decent camouflage. The range of colours in which LEGO makes parts has been greatly expanded, but there still aren't all that many colours that work well for a realistic colour scheme. In my opinion, a convincing camouflage scheme shouldn't have more than three or four different colours. Of course, if you are modelling a real vehicle, your colours are determined by those of the real vehicle. Regular green is very bright. There is a decent collection of parts in sand green as well, but the colour does look quite pale. Brown and reddish brown are pretty good and there's a fairly wide range of tan parts available. Dark green is better, but you can only get a very limited range of parts. Dark tan is really nice, but still a bit limiting. Part availability in various greys and in black is very good. For aircraft models, colours such as medium blue and sand blue can also be handy, but they are also not easily available in large quantities.

Don't use colours that contrast too much
Most real-world camouflage schemes do not mix very light or pale colours with dark ones, simply because most background don't either. An exception would be snow camouflage, which sometimes mixes dark green and white.
Fairly pale colours such as tan, sand green and light grey go reasonably well together. Similarly, black, dark green, brown and dark grey go well together. Leave out the dark grey and you've got something very close to a standard vehicle camouflage scheme on the AAV-7 above.

The second step is creating the patches. As I mentioned before, the demarcation lines between different camouflage colours tend to not be straight lines. Of course, LEGO is full of straight lines, but we can break them by applying two simple guidelines (important enough for me to make them stand out a bit):

1)The border between colours should never be a straight line of more than 3 or 4 studs long before it changes direction.
2)once a demarcation line has changed direction once, it should change again at the next stud.

If you don't follow the latter your patches will end up looking far too rectangular. I pondered making a drawing to show this, but have instead decided to show it using a picture of a model I built for the Alpha Company Forums.

Demarcation lines between different colour should typically not be straight for more than 3 or 4 bricks.

If you look at the demarcation lines between the colours on the side of the container the vehicle carries, you'll see that they follow the two rules above. There is one obvious exception: the long straight line at the bottom, and it stands out like a sore thumb! This is something I need to fix on a new version. These rules may all seem terribly complicated and they could get in the way of finding the right shape or using a particular part that works well in a particular spot. However, I have some practical advice to avoid this. What sometimes works for me is building the model without paying too much attention to the camouflage and then, when the rough form is done, simply swapping some colours around whilst applying the guidelines above. It doesn't have to require vast amounts of parts either.

As examples I'll show some more examples of other people's LEGO models that show what I think is convincing camouflage. Look closely and you'll see that the builders have generally applied the guidelines for the demarcations between the colours, quite possibly without being aware of them.

Tan and dark blueish grey on Brickmania's Tiger tank, with leaves added for extra effect.

Aleksander SE's "Prowler" Light Tank is a fictional but very convincing vehicle in dark green, dark grey and tan. The tan looks quite light compared to the other colours, but because there's not a whole lot of it looks fine.

Magnus Lauglo uses dark green, regular green and dark grey for his Griffin heavy lift helicopter. The green looks a bit lurid, but combined with the darker colours the scheme is convincing.

Lego Monster's huge Vulcan bomber has a few fairly long straight lines in the camouflage, but because it's such a huge model this doesn't distract at all. Also note the use of wedge plates to create diagonal lines.

Of course, this overview is far from complete. There are more techniques you can use, with slopes and wedge plates to make things smoother for instance (as on Lego Monster's Vulcan). Some real-world vehicles can have pretty odd-ball patterns. There is also a type of camouflage that is not so much aimed at making a vehicle or plane blend into the background, but that is instead aimed at making it harder for an enemy to spot how far away it is or in which direction it is pointing. An example of this is painting a false canopy under the cockpit of a jet, making the bottom look more like the top from a distance. This is a completely different ballgame. In any case hope that I've given you some ideas on how to make your camouflage convincing!

Happy building!

Stilzkin Igniz

2009-11-03T07:22:00.000-08:00

While browsing the LEGO Military flickr group's photo pool today, I stumbled upon a technic scale tracked articulated vehicle by Peer "mahjqa" Kreuger. Already an exceptional creation to start with, it's motorized (see here to see it in action) and even features brick built treads of a mind-blowingly clever design. I can easily say that it's one of the best creations that I've seen in quite a while, and the outdoor photography just adds to the awesomeness.

And on top of that, for his incredible video he built a micro scale version of the same vehicle.

the longest day

2009-10-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to post this excellent D-Day diorama by Andrew Beecraft for quite some time now, but forgetfulness, a cold, and downright laziness have precluded it from being posted earlier, and Andrew himself beat me to it by blogging it on the Brothers Brick (see here). However, it's such a nice creation that I feel that it should be featured here regardless. The vehicles are well built, but the landscaping strikes me as particularly impressive. I especially I like the incorporation of good ol' TLG trees - after all, not everything has to be brick built by default.

It's a matter of scale

2009-10-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

It's a regularly re-occurring topic of conversation on LEGO-related websites and forums: what constitutes minifig scale? Figures can add a lot to a creation and many military builders seem to enjoy finding the right figures and accessories to go with their models at least as much as building the actual models.

For a long time I wasn't a fan of minifigures and used to build most of my aircraft and helicopter models on a scale that, at least in my opinion, was too big (and since this is my blog after all, my opinion matters!). The trouble with minifigs is their cartoonish proportions, as nicely illustrated by a diagram made by the illustrious Tim Gould (aka. gambort).

The diagram shows how minifigures when built to different scales compare to a real human (Tim's own 'svelte' silhouette in this case). In short, minifigs are stubby fat people.

This post was prompted by a reasonably nice rendition of a Fairey Swordfish that I found on MOCpages, built by Eduardo Ariño, and I encourage you to take a look at the page for more pictures and to read some of the viewers' comments.

I'm no stranger to the Fairey Swordfish, as I built one little more than a year ago.

It seems obvious to me that Eduardo has taken a closer look at my model than he may be willing to admit, but the differences are more interesting than the similarities -most notably the scale. His model is about 50% bigger than mine (a 60 stud wingspan versus a 40 stud span on mine), which means that since my model was built to a scale of approximately 1/43, his is about 1/30. I cannot deny that the crew accommodation in my model looks a bit too cosy for comfort. However, mine does look good with the crew standing next to it.

So, is there an ideal minifig scale? I don't think so. While 1/30 is certainly pushing the boundaries, in some respects 1/43 is a bit small. It all depends on what you want to do with your model. If it should fit in a diorama or have figures standing next to it, the smaller end of the range might fit (1/60); do you want the crew to sit inside and do you perhaps want to have some fun adding interior details, the bigger end of the range (1/35) might be your thing.

day of the armoured car

2009-10-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

Carter Baldwin, Mike Psiaki, and Cole Blaq coincidentally all posted armoured cars yesterday, though they're all unique in their own respective ways.

I've seen Carter's at BrickFair, and can attest that it's very fra- I mean cool. But in all seriousness, it's a well-built creation that, as is usual with Carter, sacrifices playability for detail and sleekness.

Mike's, on the other hand, is evocative of some sort of moon buggy, which is fitting as he apparently based it on a vehicle in "StarCraft II." Unlike a moon buggy, however, it packs quite the nasty bite. In particular, I love the suspension: I can just imagine it rolling across some craggy extraterrestrial planetary surface with ease.

And, last but not least, Cole's is a rugged-looking vehicle that also looks well-suited to making it across harsh terrain. The use of an (in my opinion) oftentimes tragically overlooked windscreen is refreshing, and the overall simplicity of the creation is nice.

old blood and guts

2009-10-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

Daniel "urthedead" Zayac, who has become increasingly prolific as of late, has built an M60 main battle tank, more commonly known as the Patton, in NATO three-color woodland camouflage. He's managed to replicate the way it sits so high up, and also its distinctive front glacis. I don't recall seeing the iconic M60 rendered in the brick before, so that fact makes the model all the more unique to me.

eco-friendly death on wheels

2009-10-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Aleksander Stein's Panther jeep, built for Alpha Company, is the spiritual successor to my rather ugly original version (which, in my defense, was built quite a while ago). While he retained the basic appearance of mine, he updated nearly every aspect of it, and was even able to include an opening hood that covers a hybrid engine, as well as a cage for the gunner.

.

desert rats

2009-10-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

According to prolific builder Tyler "Legohaulic" Clites, his futuristic Remote Armor Team (RAT) started out as a study in using parts from the old basketball sets in new and unexpected ways, but the project snowballed until it became one big nice parts use (NPU). Take your time and look through the photos in his photosteam: you'll be surprised by just how many overlooked parts he managed to flawlessly integrate into the vehicles.

"Killer Duck"

2009-10-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

Shortly after posting his Raven and Piranha, Magnus Lauglo reveals yet another stunning creation, this time a ground attack fighter inspired by the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Like the A-10, the Forktail, has lines reminiscent of WWII aircraft, in particular the P-38 Lightning. Magnus nicknamed it the "Killer Duck," the latter because of its cockpit's resemblance to a duckbill, and the former due to its impressive payload, which is doubtlessly intended to give opposing forces' tank crews a very bad day.

D-Day

2009-10-03T07:21:00.000-07:00

As a member of the BrickArms staff, I'm privy to seeing and sometimes testing top secret prototypes in advance, so I've known about the new M1 Carbine, based on the variant for paratroopers, for quite some time now. Will Chapman (the owner and operator of BrickArms) has decided to unveil it at BrickCon (which I unfortunately couldn't attend), coinciding with Operation BrickLord, a collobarative display focusing on the Normandy Campaign during WWII.

Will even likes to surprise his staff on occasion, this time with a StG44 complete with a scope and night vision device, both of which add a lot of character to the item, in my opinion. Though he had previously expressed interest in tackling it, I wasn't sure if he'd be able to finish it in time for BrickCon.

on the road again

2009-10-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

Fradel "Slice151" Gonzalez busts out with a slick Neo Blacktron supply truck that packs a considerable punch in the form of a pair of rocket launchers. The final frontier is a dangerous place, so even bandits themselves have to be wary, apparently.

LEGO Military Build Challenge #2: Fire Support

2009-10-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

After a brief hiatus, Ralph "Mad Physicist" Savelsberg and I are happy to present LEGO Military Build Challenge #2: Fire Support. Just like last time, there will be no judges or prizes, and the fun of it comes from the builders' unique interpretations of the theme, which this time is fire support.

So what exactly is fire support, you ask? I'm getting to that, so shut up and listen, you maggots! If you were paying attention during BCT, you already know that fire support is the long-range fire power typically provided by artillery and close air support to the boys in the frontlines.

So what does that have to do with anything, some of you may still ask? Well, it's obvious that you're not the sharpest bayonet in the armory, so I'll spell it out for you. We need you to build whatever it is that provides fire support! Everything from an A-10 to an M109 and anything in between is fair game, so it's your lucky day, hoser! If you're so incredibly busy that you can't get your act together and build something real nice, you can at least build a little mortar team.

Well, what are you waiting for? I'm not going to hold your hand, so get off of your backsides and get to work! Post your entries here once you're done with 'em, and in the meantime feel free to flap your lips here. You have until November 30 to do the former, then I'll lock down the entry thread.

Chandler

Back in . . . dark green?!

2009-09-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

My fellow blogger Ralph Savelsberg has become all the more prolific as of late because he's taking a break from work, and his latest creation is a rebuild of his old HMMWV. As well as additional detailing (i.e., a bullbar and identification panels), he's decided to incorporate a brick-built windscreen into the creation and replace the rather lurid green of the previous iteration with dark green, bringing it much closer to the real-life standard NATO camo scheme. The result is a more interesting and realistic update of an already excellent creation.

there's your problem

2009-09-28T12:56:00.001-07:00

As part of his ongoing project of building an African city, which is impressive enough in itself, imagelego has rebuilt his T-55 in a predominately brown color scheme that makes for very convincing rust and has presented it as a ruined wreck from some previous conflict. I'm reminded of the many photos of destroyed Iraqi military hardware during the Persian Gulf War.

back in action

2009-09-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

Despite not posting anything for a while, Magnus Lauglo shows that he hasn't been resting on his laurels by unveiling two new creations. He's been working on the Raven, a multirole fighter that's lines are reminiscent of the MiG 29, for some time now, and as I was fortunate enough to watch it progress and even supply a few bricks for it, I can honestly say that it's among the best of his creations and as usual is quite a solid build.

Also of interest is the Piranha, a compact landing craft that nevertheless packs a punch in the form of three machine guns (one of which appears to be a gatling gun). Like his other watercraft, in a way it reminds me of Nordic designs - in this case the Finnish Jurmo class landing craft.

ack-ack

2009-09-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

The photography may be lacking, but creations built predominately with white bricks are difficult to photograph, anyway, and it doesn't diminish the quality of the creation itself, a ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" by stgeorge6. I've been a fan of Soviet armoured fighting vehicles in general and the "Shilka" (or the "Zeus," as it was known among troops) in particular for quite a while now, so I got a kick out of seeing it rendered in the brick for, as far as I know, the first time. My favorite part is the turret: the use of those corner bricks is one of the few ways to pull off the rounded turrets typical to Soviet armoured fighting vehicles.

Patrolling with Phi!ma

2009-09-26T11:32:00.001-07:00

The Project: "Patrolling"
Originally uploaded by Phi!Ma

This very nice scene was built by Phi'ma as part of a project with four other builders involving each building a scene on a 24x24 stud base. This model represents close combat fighting in hedgerows -not unlike much of the fighting that went on in Normandy shortly after the D-day landings. The Jeep is a nice model by itself, but the luscious plant-life makes the scene really stand out.

In the caption he mentions that he believes it is some of his best work. I wasn't familiar with his building before, but I'll definitely keep an eye on what's next and would love to know what the other four are up to.

comin' at ya

2009-09-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

Cole Blaq, a prolific builder whose creations often blur the line between contemporary military science and science fiction, busts out with an rugged-looking truck that contains a very cool surprise.

Achtung - T-35/85?!

2009-09-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

Exotrator has finished his longtime work in progress T-34/85, Which turned out to be worth the wait. Though it appears to lack an interior, the payoff is that it's highly detailed and very accurate to its real-life equivalent.

Edit: It appears that he was able to incorporate an interior, after all. Even better!

white cloud

2009-09-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

Dutch builder Fredoichi presents a self-propelled weapons platform in microscale with a typically difficult to pronouceable Japanese name (which apparently translates to "white cloud"), operating somewhere in the arctic. According to him, it was merely a quick build for fun, but it looks pretty darn good regardless.

instructions, please

2009-09-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Robin "GreenLead" Chang has finished instructions for Aleksander Stein's Type 30 "Ravager" jeep. Built for the Federated Republic of Cassegrain (FRC), the nefarious opposing forces of Alpha Company, Robin's pet project, it has a fittingly menacing look to it. As usual, the instructions themselves are well done, and he has included an interesting briefing on the vehicle at the back of them.

MOCpages isn't all bad

2009-09-20T08:47:00.001-07:00

Zackhariah Macasaet's M1 Abrams serves to remind us that there's still good stuff on MOCpages if you look hard enough (though I admittedly stumbled upon this photo on flickr). He says that it's studless, and, while studs don't bother me, I have to admit that the sleek end product is all the more realistic.

Military Lego at STEAM 2009

2009-09-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Time for some shameless self-promotion: on October 3rd and 4th members of the British AFOL group 'The Brickish Association' will be displaying models at the Great Western LEGO Show in the STEAM museum in Swindon in the UK. Too many different things for me to mention here will be on show, including a number of train layouts, neo-classic space models, Star Wars models and loads more. There will also be a military presence, however, which is where this blog comes in.

Dr. Sinister, imperial ruler of tabletown will be attending with his army. He made a video of his display during last year's show.

This year's Tabletown display promises to be even bigger and greener.

By now you may be wondering why I mentioned self-promotion? After all, I'm not Dr. Sinister. The answer lies in a display that I mentioned in the very first post on this blog. A few months ago, Brickish displayed models at the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology. Part of the display was a set of aircraft built by Ed Diment (a.k.a. Lego Monster), his lovely wife Annie (Mrs Monster, obviously) and me (you see, there I am!). The whole thing was too big to capture completely in one nice picture, but here's one to give you an impression.

All of the aircraft, including a Sopwith Camel, Hawker Fury, Supermarine Spitfire, AVRO Vulcan, BAE Hawk, Sea Harrier, Panavia Tornado, and Eurofighter will be on display at STEAM as well. Yours truly has already booked his plane ticket!

FlaK attack

2009-09-19T08:31:00.000-07:00

Henrik Hoexbroe is new to the FOL scene on flickr, but you certainly can't tell it from the exellent quality of his work, which so far focuses on WWII microscale vehicles. All he needs is some white paper to use as a background and he's set!

4x4s galore

2009-09-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

After a three-month hiatus, urthedead is back in action with a rugged Unimog chock full of working features, complete with independent suspension. While he was at it, he also gave us a glimpse of two other vehicles that he's been working on - a Land Rover and a Land Cruiser - photos of which he assures us will be up soon.

combined arms

2009-09-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dan Siskind gives us a sneak peak of yet another kit that he's working on, this time a German StuG III. He presented in an older dio of his, which he modified to make it look war-torn. The rubble is a nice touch, and of course the design of the vehicle itself is excellent as always.

Swiss neutrality

2009-09-17T08:20:00.000-07:00

Once again, Jerrec shows us just how awesome he is by building a futuristic Swiss tank and motorizing it by incorporating no less than four Power Functions motors. Check out his video on YouTube to see it in action.

not your average hearse

2009-09-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

▸Jacob presents a futuristic halftrack for his Jiindu faction, and, as usual, manages to cram in an interesting surprise.

backstab

2009-09-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

As my first post, I'd like to blog an abstract vignette by Polish builder pepik_. It depicts a German and Polish soldier locked in mortal combat, with a Soviet soldier sneaking up to stab stab the Polish soldier in the back. It's a fitting metaphor to the unfortunate events of the Invasion of Poland.