my own creation

MOC: NCS 918 Interceptor Mark II

Thursday, 18th January 2018 By Caz

I’ve been working on a NCS spaceship MOC for a month or so now, but it’s finally evolved into something I’m happy with. Initially I gathered together all the bley, blue and trans yellow pieces I could find and bodged this togther:

I was quite pleased with the shape of the wings and the engine, but the front was hideous. I desperately needed some better trans yellow pieces for the cockpit. The engine details were nice and greebly, and there was quite a bit of yellow around as well as blue and bley.

After “borrowing” a couple of trans yellow windscreen parts (6070) from Benny’s Spaceship outriders, I was happier with the front. But I also rebuilt the wings quite significantly. Still a lot of blue and yellow accents everywhere, which isn’t quite in the NCS canon.

Benny was the first test pilot for the craft. He gave me quite a lot of feedback on what could be changed before the ship could go into production.

Eventually after a Bricklink order or two had come through, the final model turned out like this. I’m really pleased so much of the original engines made it through – and the simpler colours in the wings are much better, I think. Plus the new wrap-around windscreen makes for much better visibility.

Here’s a comparison shot – of my new 918 Interceptor and the original 918 model from 30+ years ago. My craft is a fast, highly manoeuvrable patrol ship meant for low-planet orbit or short inter-planetary hops. I like the wing shapes seen from above here. Yes, I know the bumblebee stripes are 90° off from their “correct” NCS orientation, but changing them to face forward would require another radical wing rebuild, so it’s staying like this for the moment. Besides, the original 918 doesn’t have any stripes at all!

NCS 918 MarkII Interceptor vs old 918 One Man Spacecraft

I hope you enjoyed seeing how my MOC evolved into the final configuration.

Minifigs: Display Frame & Shelving

Saturday, 13th January 2018 By Caz

I was stupid enough to drive to Ikea on a Friday afternoon yesterday, but I needed some things to help me organise and display my growing LEGO collection. First of all, I bought three long LACK shelves and a TV bench to put along one wall to display my Micropolis and larger builds. I was pleased to put the shelves up nice and level, but there was a lot of drilling involved!

I had been thinking about how best to display my Minifig collection for some time. There were various options but I wanted something which would be dust proof, and most of them were proving expensive. However, I did a bit of online research and found that other folks had had some success using the cheap Ribba shadowbox frames from Ikea. Hence my trip around the M25…

I had the 48×48 baseplate already, and simply pushed the black CMF display plates between the baseplate studs. Perhaps it’s not a legal connection, but they fit nice and snugly and even with a heavy minifig attached, they show no sign of coming out in a hurry.

Then I chose some of my favourite CMFs and put them on their plates – and voila! It looks great hanging above the fireplace in the lounge. I probably have enough minifigs to do another one too, but I will need to buy another baseplate and frame before I can put that together.

GBC: Big Bird & Pinball

Friday, 5th January 2018 By Caz

As a complete novice, I have been doing some research to find a fairly simple GBC module to build. I found plans for a Classic Marble Pump on Planet-GBC, then went rummaging in my parts drawers to see if I had enough bits to put it together. This is what I came up with!

The plans built me the input side, which I dubbed Big Bird. Then of course I had to add some wings and eyes! It is built from mainly System bricks apart from some gearing and the motor hidden behind. I didn’t have enough of the same coloured bricks to build it out of one colour, but who cares – multicoloured is more fun!

Then I had to get the balls back down again to the right height for the next module’s input. I decided on a pinball type board, built from Technic beams, with pins stuck in them in a triangular pattern, built to my own design. I think it works quite well. Tomorrow we are taking it to Caterham for a test run with other GBC modules made by the London AFOLs.