The Finished Model!

Well I finished the model, and I really love the complete model. It's a really solid Lego Set the only real weak points are the guns which do break off really easily - but are easily fixed.

The roof section comes off really easily - it's great for accessing the interior and I really love the functional looking interior - it looks like it could work as a multi crew spacecraft.

Images below:-

My Space Patrol set with the vintage Lego Space Transporter craft shown for scale. (Set 918)

My Space Patrol set with a vintage space pilot shown for scale.

Rear view of the craft, the engines and the gunners viewscreen are shown.

This is how the roof section is removed, the large window at the front is easily removed too for better access to the pilot.

The interior of the craft, shown top to bottom are the gunner, captain and navigator.

Close up of the pilots cockpit, not the large amount of computers and controls compared to traditional Lego Space sets - realistic for a large space ship, at least in comparison to the vintage four dials and a steering wheel setup!

Another view of the interior of the ship, showing the pilot mainly, with the navigator in the foreground.

View of the gunners rear facing window and his two joy sticks.

Main interior shot, showing gunner, captain navigator and pilot, along with some of teh computer consoles.

View of the interior - not the fire extinguisher on the captains side of the ship.

Full interior view - not the ladder for the gunner to get into his seat.

Comparitive shot of the Set 918 Transporter and my 'Space Patrol' Lego Design by Me Set.

Front on view, here you can see the pilot, the navigator and the captain, their seats can be swivelled to face forwards.

Close up view of the gunners seat.

Side on view of the whole craft, there is a small window, going across for the captain and navigator and a large window on either side of the gunner so he can better orientate himself.

Rear 3/4 view, not the large amount of small booster rockets and similar in addition to the main engines.

The top mounted rear gun rotates through 360 and tilts up to 45 degrees.

Front 3/4 view - all guns forward facing, the ones at the front will tilt outwards by 45 degrees.

Main side on view - note the large window for the pilot and the impressive array guns.

Building the set.

Well I had some great fun with my 4 year old little girl at the static caravan building my 'Space Patrol' Lego Design by me set...

These images are actually pretty good quality, you can zoom in on any image by clicking on it - then again a second time for full size.

I thought it would be fun to make it look like the crew were building the ship - it was nearly finished at this stage, most of 530 pieces in place.

Here we see the incomplete cockpit - with the Captain and Gunner in their seats.

Here are the navigator and pilot finishing off the ship - fitting a wing section no less!

At the start of this build, the glass baking dish was 100% full to the brim - one problem with large design by me sets is the fact you don't get little numbered bags - you just get a massive bag and a packing list...

The instructions actually came in two books - there were so steps!  The instructions also - being automatically generated are not up to the standards of commercial Lego Sets - they were useful, helpful and generally pretty good - however, there were a few steps which weren't entirely easy to follow.  Of course you can always refer to the LD4 program to see exactly what goes where.

I'll be sharing the wonderful printed box next time and some more images of the complete ship - perhaps with some images of a vintage Lego Spaceship for comparison.

My set came!

I actually bit the bullet and went ahead and ordered my Design by Me 'Space Patrol' set.

It's the long ship with big guns on either side and on top, that you find my looking in the gallery for 'space patrol'.

I spent a long time checking and re-checking that it should produce a solid useable model, and I was making fine corrections up until the day I ordered it. 

530 pieces!  It's a big set, it cost me nearly £100, but I'm really, really pleased with it.  The quality of printing on the box is fantastic and looks better than you can appreciate from the design screen.

It actually only just fit into the box, so unless they do bigger boxes I would consider restricting sets to at least less than 700 pieces or they might have to ship it in two boxes. 

The pieces also come in one huge bag with a picking list.  So it's harder to build than a normal set, you have to spend some time sorting out the pieces. 

I had a great time building it, with my 4 year old daughter (She loves space ships) and the finished model was fantastic, my 11 year old nephew says HE wants to order it too!

What I might do - is get my nephew my smaller less expensive set for christmas.  The one I am documenting the build of here.

Overall, I am reallly pleased with the service, and the quality of the set.  I would say though - if you are ordering, spend lots of time checking and re-checking the set by going through the building instructions online and making sure it will fit together and form a solid model.  If you don't - you could end up with an expensive lego set that falls apart in your hands!

Thankfully, I hadn't made any errors and it formed a really solid, functional set - the only weak point being the guns falling off at the slightest knock, but I kind of expected that so...

A few more pictures of the smaller model that I might order my nephew for Christmas:-

Set on order!

Well, I finally finished the Space Pirates Lego Set I've been designing.  The problem is, the finished product comprised of the 2 man raider craft I'm showing at the moment on this blog, a base and a large capital ship with an interior and a 4 man crew...

Total price?  £200 more than I'm happy to spend on a toy at the moment :P

I decided to go with the one I created first, the capital ship, it's in some respects the most interesting model and it's my first attempt so it seems a good place to start.  I went over the design meticulously trying to make sure everything interlocks properly and that it will be a good solid model with some play value once it's finished.

Of course whether I've done this properly will only tell once I get the thing and start building it.  Which takes a while as they have to print the box and instructions to your design... Then hand pick all the bricks and pieces, in my model there are over 500 pieces so...

In the meantime I'm trying to stray away from designing more - I've been watching the my gaps in the Harry Potter series (Goblet of Fire and Phoenix Order) and spending more time on the star wars roleplaying board which is fun...

For now I'll leave you with a couple more images of the 2 man raider craft nearing completion.

More sedate activities...

Apart from Lego, I'm finding myself drawn to other more sedate activities lately.  My burning desire to stay up late and drink and play video games is dwindling.  Last night I sat up with a cup of tea, idly writing star wars fanfic and on a star wars roleplaying board which I've been a member of since 2003...

Maybe it's getting old?  Maybe I'm finally growing up... Hang on a minute I'm, talking about taking up Lego as a hobby again?!

Okay, speaking of Lego, here wave the wings started and the pilot and co-pilots seats and controls starting to take shape.

What building to Minifigure scale means.

I did have an ambitious thought as to whether I could build an Imperial Star Destroyer to minifigure scale - only a fleeting thought though, because once you start working it out - it becomes a daunting task.

Firstly, an ISD is 1.7 km long, if a 2 metre person is represented by a 2 cm minifigure then that's a 1:100 scale.  So were talking of 1700 metres, or 170,000 cm knocking two noughts off makes it 1700 cm or 17 Metres.


So even if detailed plans of what the Imperial Star Destroyer interior was like existed, you would be aiming to build a lego set nearly 20 metres long, and it's probably half that wide at the widest point.  To test the costing of such a large model I built a layered twin wing section last night in Design by me.  I grouped and duplicated it until I had about 45 cm of wings - the price £50 Now you would need an upper and a lower for this so for the wings outer edges, you have to think £200 per metre.  So for the basic outer shell, super structure we would be talking about spending in excess of £4000 with no interior, command bridge, hangar, fighter craft or crew or even exerior detail.I can imagine the cost would actually run up to in excess of £40,000 minifigures alone would be a problem.  Including the pilots and Stormtroopers an ISD had over 45,000 staff on board.  Considering buying used Starwars Lego figures is the only way to get the correct crew at the moment without buying sets, assuming you used that method to crew the entire crew at what seems to be the going rate of about £5 you would spend £225,000 on crew alone... Assuming there were enough used Stormies and Imperial Officers to crew it in existance and avaialable to buy.

What would be nice was a collaboration between Lucas and Lego and a full minifigure scale Lego Star Wars Theme park, with minifigure scale ISD's, Super Star Destoyers and  a Death Star (Officially the first one was 160 km diameter so that's 16,000,000 cm diameter so minifigure scale makes it 160,000 cm or 1600 M - 1.6 km making the volume about 2,144,660,584 cubic metres....) Of course the second Death Star was supposedly 900 M diameter so that makes it 90,000,000 cm diamter, minifigure scale 9 km diameter... Volume... Oh forget it... You get the idea!

Minifigure scale large Lego Star Wars ships are basically impractical to the point of being ridiculous.

As for my set - the second engine in place, the flat bit will be where the pilots sit.

It's funny I'm considering getting into Lego as an adult, as a hobby.  For a long time all my spare time was thrown at Taekwondo I even made a taekwondo website to help people with patterns.  I ought to start training again.  Lego is fun but it doesn't get you fit!

The Principles of Design and Good Toys

The design objectives for my lego set is that it should be built to minifigure scale, it should appear to be functional, so there should be space for things like fuel tanks and there should be adequate controls for the minifigure crew.

Having built some more Classic Lego Space with my daughter last night - I built 6882 the Astro Walker, but it's a two legged version as so many bits are missing :P - I've come to the conclusion that Lego is a really well designed and engineered toy.  There's a great guide to buying toys that echoes this thought at Choosing Presents for Children I think all in all, a good toy should be;

Constructive, and teach children manual dexterity.

Facilitate imaginitive play.

Be robust and able to withstant the abuse given to it by toddlers.

If you look at successful toys, for example Playmobil and Lego, they fulfill this criteria nicely.  The interesting thing about Playmobil is that its designer originally pitched model planes to the makers, his idea was turned down but he was asked to design little people which became PlayMobil.

Next stage of my lego build - again, I'm going to try and start with a small two man craft.

I've not got a base, a solid under structure and I've started positioning the engines.  The cockpit should be big enough for two.

Next I'll be adding the wings, building up the super-structure and starting work on the cockpit.