2004 – 2014
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There’s been a fair bit of Lego stuff going on as of late (though I am trying to keep drawing on the side) so I figure it was time to make a post!
Continue reading “d386 Lego Miscellany: T18, Trains, Haruka, Kagurazaka, MASS, and Cyber Derp”
Quite some time ago now I posted a GT1 Test Painting saying that I might talk about the GT1 more in the future. Well, now it’s the future, it just took more time to get here than I’d thought.
A couple weeks after our last adventure, D managed to tree his Gamma 370. However, it dawned on us that the entirety of the propulsion components of the 370 (Motor, ESC, and battery) were available from the local hobby shop. Given that the rest of the Gamma 370 was just some foam in the shape of an airplane, we decided it would be interesting to try to build a plane from “scratch”. Here’s what we had to work with:
Continue reading “Weekend (mis)Adventures 2: RC Planes, part II”
IT’S A POST BY J!!!!!!!
Ahem. Anyway, now that I’m back on the same side of the country as D, we try to get together every weekend to do something. At some point we figured we might as well document some of what we’re doing and put it on Nonsense Wars. That’s the entire point of having a blog/website right?
Step 1: Do stuff.
Step 2: Take photos of yourself doing stuff.
Step 3: Post photos of yourself doing stuff to internet. Maybe write about yourself doing stuff.
Step 4: Do more stuff.
Some of you might object that “??? […] Profit!” is missing. That’s not how the internet works for most people.
Anyway, on to Step 3!
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Yes folks, with the Melvin more or less working properly, I had a great idea by which to revisit the Titanic: I decided to replace the foamcore cutout with a paper model.
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I was only planning on having three posts for the USS Melvin saga, but at this point I really do need four to document all the crap that’s gone on with this thing. I last left off after the Melvin’s first real test run, which unfortunately took place in much less than ideal conditions. Nonetheless, I was able to determine that the performance was pretty good and that the boat was a little too heavy with four D batteries.
Thus, the first of many modifications were made.
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I apparently didn’t have much to say about the old 5AT back in d93 (yes, the old 5AT had been sitting around for seven years, which is almost as long as the Kagurazaka), so I’ll start from the top.
Much like the ACE, the 5AT is an advanced steam locomotive that was developed and not built. The difference is that the 5AT is a much more recent design, and that the construction has only been recently shelved (obviously it could still be built – with a higher probability than the ACE). It seems to me that the 5AT was also much further along in development than the ACE ever was. There are a lot of detailed calculations and CAD models on the <a href="5at.co.uk"5AT website.
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One of the themes of my art has always been the juxtaposition and combination of ancient and advanced technology. As long as I can remember, I’ve had space trains and space ships. Those outrageous shenanigans continue into the present, but I am just as fond of more subtle shenanigans like art-deco space or steam intermodal.
As such, I’m a big fan of modern steam, or attempts to modernize steam, and that’s where I’ve gone with my more recent Lego train models such as the 5AT, SR Leader, and even to some extent the venerable FF7 Locomotive. Today’s MoC is a continuation of this “series”; the American Coal Enterprises (ACE) 3000 is an advanced steam locomotive concept that gained some traction in the late seventies and early eighties during the oil crisis and lost it all when gas prices came back down.
The ACE has been kinda-sorta done for a while. You can see the beta version in this USS Melvin pic from March.
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Last year I built some Lego ships for the first time in many years. They were effectively direct replacements for older ships that I no longer found satisfactory (in much the same way I do paintings) and they were quite successful at that. Between then and now, trying to capitalize on this win streak, I once again tried to replace the venerable Kagurazaka, but I only almost made it.
The Kanako would have been the 10th of my big named ships (though now that they are getting smaller, I question whether they “deserve” names anymore). I planned, designed, and built it in much the same way I did the Maehara and Konoe, and I tried very hard to stick to the plan. The layout was intentionally unconventional (for me) such that the ship could do forward broadsides, in accordance to some scenarios J and I had discussed in the past. The styling is intentionally conventional (for me again) for development simplicity and parts conservation (and because I didn’t have enough of the “art deco piece”).
In the prototypical incarnation, I think the Kanako would have been something like 80 to 90 studs long and 30 to 40 studs wide. This is actually comparable in length to the 88-stud long Maehara, but the fact that the Kanako would have been entirely enclosed means that it would have been much bigger parts commitment. The fully enclosed Konoe comes in at just 48 studs. Given these numbers the 100+ stud Kagurazaka is simply massive – and I’m pretty sure at one point I said “100 studs isn’t that many”.
