A new owner for Bricklink

A single news item has for the week: Bricklink has been sold by the former owner Daniel Jezek's family to Jung-Ju “Jay” Kim. You can read the full announcement on The Brothers Brick.

If you consider yourself a LEGO builder, you most likely know what Bricklink is. Otherwise, your first question is: what is it, and why should I care?

Bricklink is an unofficial marketplace for anything related to LEGO including sets and bricks. If you look at any creation on the net, chances are that it contains a significant amount of bricks purchased via Bricklink.

Just a two for this week:

(via The Lego Car Blog)

(via Dieterr89)

The air force of DIetterr89

It does not happen very often that there is a post about a single person's creations, but it is worth making an exception today.

As I started to build war planes a while ago, my goal was to find a scale that is the smallest possible,  but still gives me enough room to incorporate many interesting details. I have settled at 1:48. This is the scale at which the MiG-15 and the Bf-109 has been built, and this will be the scale for the next few too. I have never dreamt that it would be worth going smaller.

But the planes of Dieterr89 prove that it is more than worth it. He built an entire air force at 1:70. This is a Messerschmitt 109. It represents the shape and colors of the original aircraft as truly as possible:

Its opponent from the Eastern front is a Lavochkin La-5. This is a truely unique build, you cannot find many Soviet WWII planes built from LEGO. To make it more special, it has a radial engine:

In the case of the desert Ju-87 Stuka it was an extra challenge to build the fixed landing gear and the angled wing:

Its "attacker" is a Spitfire, also in desert camouflage:

As the war progressed, Mustangs started to fly their long range escort missions with jettisonable external tanks:

Its opponent is one of the first jet fighters, a Messerschmitt Me-262. I think this looks even better than the other ones:

We left two modern planes to the end. This is an F-16 Fighting Falcon:

Its pair is a Soviet-build Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29. Notice the nose bending down a bit:

Excellent collection, let's hope there will be more soon!

Family photo

I still have pretty ambitious plans to build, but not so much time recently. Until I manage to carve out more, this is a family photo of two of the planes built so far.

Messerschmitt uncovered

I am happy to start the New Year with something fresh and take a look at why I have bothered with various Messerschmitts so much.

Several years ago I have already tried to build one. The 2009 model was a heavy compromise: it was built in Lego Digital Designer and the bricks were chosen from the limited selection of DesignByMe that still existed. As a result most of the plane was black because this color had the largest selection of bricks.

It was already time to try again and build a fresh plane for the Puma squadron.

This is a Messerschmitt Bf-109 G6 "Gustav" of the Royal Hungarian Air Force from 1944, using the black and white roundel from WWII. The legendary "Puma" have accomplished many missions against American and Soviet planes.

As I plan to build other planes at the same scale it was important to pick a size in which the others will look good as well. I am a big fan of "micro" aircraft, but that would not allow me to build a lot of details. So I have chosen a different scale, 1:48. This is still somewhat smaller than other Messerschmitts, only Legohaulic's fighter coming close. My plan was to add as many shape and color details as possible. Hence, there are no other features: the landing gear is not retractable (although it is easy to remove) and there is not enough room for a minifig pilot either (although at this scale it would be still doable with some compromises). 

Another important point is the wing. I like building wings as thin as possible, I am not a big fan of thick and blocky wings. The current wing is built of two layers of plates, I think it would have been impossible to make it any thinner. The shape is just a bit blocky, but overall I am quite happy with the shape of the wings and the tail.

I am pretty happy with the outcome. At this scale the plane has pretty recongnisable shape and colors as well.

Please take a look at the Flickr album for more photos. As usual they can be found on Picasa as well.

The Messerschmitt story, part II.

Let's continue the story of LEGO Messerschmitt fighters. As I promised last week, today we look at models that have something unusual.

The plane of locolson is clearly larger than the others and sports two special features. The dimensions allow for more details here: it has a fully retractable landing gear. Many builders have this on their aircraft, but it is not a standard feature on other Bf-109 models. The list of unique features does not stop here, it also has a rotating propeller without any Photoshop: there is just enough room for the motor in the front of the cockpit and for the battery box right behind it.

ABStract/ did not fiddle with real bricks. The plane comes in three different versions. The first one has a classic "Battle of Britain" scheme. It has a retractable landing gear, but this one is hard to operate with your fingers. Nevertheless it looks quite decent:

The next version has almost exactly the same shape but a different color scheme: a tan-green combination, characteristic of the desert versions:

The third version has been significantly rebuilt. Unlike the first two "Emils", this is a "Friedrich" with a similar desert camouflage:

Lego pilot built his own plane on the computer. The propeller is worth mentioning, it looks quite different from the other planes. The fighter is just "finishing" an A-20:

Last but not least, take a look at this microscale Bf-109 from tbone_tbl:

The paint scheme is quite characteristic, the type can be instantly recognized from the yellow nose and wingtips. I think it would be impossible to build a Messerschmitt smaller than this!

The Messerschmitt story, part I.

After covering some trains last week let's take a look at an aircraft: the Messerschmitt Bf-109. This fighter is one of the most recognizable aircraft of WWII, the icon of German air superiority during the early years of war. It saw action during the Spanish Civil War and at the breakout of the "big" war it was already a battle-proven opponent.

It is well known and built many times from bricks as well, you can find quite a few variants on the net. Let's take a look at the best ones, starting with minifig-scale models and leave the more exotic ones for the next part.

For a start, let's look at LegoUli's model. In my opinion this is one of the best: the shape of the aircraft is excellent around the engine but also towards the rear of the airframe. The landing gear is fixed but looks very good. The 9-stud propeller is also an nice fit at this scale:

The plane of eremms was also built at a similar scale and it also has a minifig at the controls. The colors are similar but the details are quite different: the techniques used at the wing, the propeller and the cockpit differ quite a bit from the previous version:

Opëx Røver's plane is somewhat smaller: the wing is 14 studs compared to 16-17 studs on the previous ones above. Nonetheless the the details are finely crafted. My personal favorite is the tail section. I personally don't like the nose cone and the landing gear, but the color choice is slightly more interesting than on the planes above:

Last but not least let's see the creations of a real pro, Legohaulic. His models also illustrate the evolution of a build, how a rookie creation becomes a real masterpiece.

Frankly, the first model would not be part of this blog post without the subsequent ones. The model is recognizable but nothing special: it is large and does not have any particularly interesting details. The colors are not very interesting either and the photo is far from great. However it is a great basis for progress:

It is no wonder that the author tried a second time. The next one is a lot more sophisticated than the previous one: the engine, the cockpit and the plane overall are a lot nicer. Like the other planes above it also has enough room for a minifig piloting the stick. The most serious mistake is the green light on the port side. Looking at it more we can also realize that the plane is quite large: the wings are over 20 studs and the minifig at the stick looks a bit too small:

This is probably how Legohaulic has felt about it too because he decided to give it a third try as well. This is the result, probably one of the most well known LEGO variants of the famous Messerschmitt fighter:

Like the ones above it has a minifig inside, but it is more unusual than the others in several ways. First of all, this is the smallest of all models: the wing is just over 12 studs. The fuselage is only a little bit wider than 3 studs - I think it is quite an achievement to find room for a minifig inside. Another specialty is the choice of colors: unlike the other planes above the paint scheme makes heavy use of dark green, and it looks pretty awesome. The only strange thing is the small nose cone, it looks a bit smaller than it should.

And which one is the best? I will let you choose.

Next week we look at more special Messerschmitt variations.

Messerschmitt Bf-109

Most of the time I am a pacifist except when it is about warbirds. I have built this airplane about a year ago but it was not covered on the blog yet.

The goal was to build a Messerschmitt Bf-109G "Gustav" fighter plane from WWII. The original plane is probably the most well known German fighter plane from the era that flew in many air forces in the world including the "Puma" Air Defense Wing.

It was designed in LDD, so the most of it can be ordered on factory.lego.com-on. Some advice before you do so:

• Ordering on the site is limited to western countries. The price is approximately 80 USD.
  
• It may happen that some parts have run out of stock. Best is to download the LDD file, swap the critical parts to something else and it is ready to be ordered.

The way the plane was designed and built means the use of colors is ... cough ... interesting :) Most of it is black because most Lego parts are available in black. The undernose is yellow becuase a similar scheme was used on German elite squadrons. The tail has a Hungarian flag though.

After I got it from Lego I replaced the propeller with a 3-feather one using Technic parts and it got an undercarriage.



To check out the details please visit the album.