About Ralph

Ralph Savelsberg, also known as Mad physicist, is an actual physicist, but he's not all that mad. He has been building with LEGO ever since he could first put two bricks together. He primarily builds scale models of cars and aircraft. You can find most of Ralph's stuff on his flickr pages.

Posts by Ralph

The Miura is a red raging bull

Italian tractor manufacturer Ferruccio Lamborghini was a man not to be messed with. When he complained to Enzo Ferrari (of the eponymous sports-car manufacturer) that the busted clutch on his Ferrari was the same one as he used on his company’s tractors and about poor service, Enzo Ferrari famously snubbed him by telling him that, as a tractor manufacturer, Lamborghini couldn’t know anything about sports cars. Lamborghini set out to prove him wrong, by starting a company to build the best Grand Tourer money could buy. He chose a raging bull as the company’s emblem.
Since then Lamborghini has become famous for its supercars and, according to the guys from Top Gear, is the maddest car company of them all. Senator Chinchilla has built an excellent model of one of the fist ones: the Miura Jota

Unlike Ferrari, Lamborghini doesn’t have a racing history, focusing on road cars. The Miura Jota however, was a development of the road car intended for racing. This explains the particularly unadorned look of the car, when compared to the already very clean design of the ‘normal’ Miura. The car never took part in a race, however. In typical Lamborghini fashion it crashed and then burned to a cinder during a test drive.

Most of the car models we feature are basically detailed sculptures, with perhaps a few functions such as steering or opening doors. I don’t tend to blog pure Technic models. This is not because I don’t appreciate the skill involved in building them, but for me it’s about the aesthetic. I prefer the look of system builds. Senator Chinchilla’s Miura has a beautifully sculpted body, with opening doors and an opening clam-shell engine cover. Underneath the voluptuous curves lurks a Technic chassis with steering, working suspension, gearbox and a transversely mounted engine, like the real car. It combines the best of both worlds.

Thanks to Jack Marquez (Ewok in Disguise) for the suggestion.

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Ho ho ho, getting ready for Christmas with Gary Davis

Santa’s house, built by Gary Davis (Bricksforbrains), shows preparations for Christmas in full swing, with the elves preparing toys to be delivered to delighted children all over the world. Santa may live in a rustic-looking cabin, but in Gary’s world his whole set-up looks like it could teach amazon a few lessons.

The elves aren’t running around sorting packages by hand. That work is done by a Rube Goldberg-type contraption (or Heath Robinson, if you’re British) that sorts and packages them before delivering them to Santa’s sleigh. This operation is run by computer from ‘Mission control’ and Santa himself sits behind a desk communicating via his smart-phone. Gary is a big fan of Gerry Anderson’s work, including Thunderbirds, and I think it shows. Merry Christmas.

This hot rod is bigger than yours

It was inevitable, really. We’ve blogged hot rods and a full size LEGO car before and British LEGO-Technic enthusiast Simon Burfield built a working Lego vehicle large enough to carry a person a while ago (which we sadly neglected to blog at the time), but now there’s an actual full-size drivable LEGO hot rod, large enough to carry two people. This crazy contraption was built by Australian Steve Sammartino and Raul Oaida, from Romania.

About half a million bricks were used in the construction. The wheels aren’t made out of LEGO elements, obviously, and neither are a few of the other structural bits. The engine, however, is built with no fewer than 256 LEGO pneumatic pistons, which are powered by compressed air and can propel the car to a speed of about 20 km/h. According to Steve he is neither a car enthusiast nor a Lego enthusiast, which makes me wonder just how big things get if he is enthusiastic!

Via the BBC. Thanks to billyburg for the suggestion.

Step right up! to the LEGOLand Circus

There’s something wonderfully old-fashioned about the latest model built by Nick Barrett (TechnicNick), the LEGOLand circus. Before there were minifigs, LEGO already made the much larger maxifigs (although nobody called them that at the time). Their upper torsos and heads were specialised parts, but their bodies were brick-built. I had a few of these as a child and my sister had a much larger collection. Nick, who is a few years older than me, has combined these classic figures with modern parts and top-notch build techniques in this fantastic model.

Apparently I’m not alone in liking this, because Nick’s model won the 6th annual MocOlympics contest. Check out the details (and what happens after the fuze on the cannon is lit) on MOCPages.

Villa Amanzi is an amazing holiday-getaway

If Phuket in Thailand tickles your fancy and you’ve got some money to burn, perhaps Villa Amanzi is just the place to rent for your holiday.

This spectacular model of the villa was built by Robert Turner (rt_bricks). It’s roughly half minifig scale, but still measures a respectable 96 studs x 64 studs x 61 bricks and has a detailed interior. The house is fantastic, but I particularly like the rock face and the tropical foliage above it. Robert’s description sounds as though it could be from a holiday brochure: “It features a 15 metre infinity pool overlooking the Andaman Sea, 6 bedrooms, and a contemporary modern design nestled into the edge of a ravine and up against an impressive rock face that penetrates into the house on multiple floors”

The little big rig is a zippy RC

Back in 2009, LEGO released two sets (8183 and 8184 ) that got me pretty excited. The reason for my excitement was that these sets contained a car chassis that could be remote-controlled using a Power Functions IR-remote. This would make it relatively easy to build your own relatively compact remote-controlled car. I bought one, but it had about as much directional control as a puppy on a wet floor; it constantly bumped into walls or bits of furniture. It was fast, though.

Curtis D. Collins (curtydc) has now used a similar chassis to build his “little big rig”. He too reports that the steering isn’t great, but also that it is a zippy a little RC. I believe that, certainly with those big wheels. I also think it looks pretty cool. Like Barry Bosman’s Monster Masher, it has a certain toy-like quality to it that reminds me of the RC cars that were around when I was a child.

Jump Jet

Peter Dornbach (dornbi) has built a very neat model of a Cold War classic: the British Sea Harrier. The Harrier has a somewhat odd-ball appearance, which is captured beautifully in the model. The odd shape is largely due to the aircraft’s unique Rolls Royce Pegasus engine, which allows the aircraft to take off and land vertically. This ability is why it is sometimes known as the Jump Jet.

During the Cold War, many air forces worried about the vulnerability of their airfields to enemy strikes. Fighters that can operate from a much smaller strip, at a time of crisis, can be dispersed to smaller and better concealed locations away from their main base. Building a jet that can take off and land vertically is a big challenge, however. A whole range of different ideas were tried, including having additional lift engines mounted vertically inside the aircraft. This obviously was a very heavy solution. Using rocket boosters to launch a conventional jet from a short ramp worked, but left the jet in question with no place to land. The only successful design was the British Harrier, whose Pegasus engine has four jet nozzles that can be swiveled down to direct the jet’s entire thrust upward. Despite its diminutive scale of only 1/48, Peter’s model has these swiveling nozzles.

Its ability to operate without long runways made the Harrier an attractive choice for shipboard use. British Harriers gained most of their fame (or notoriety) in the 1982 Falklands War, where Royal Navy Sea Harriers, operating from small aircraft carriers, racked up about 20 air-to-air kills against the Argentinian Air Force and Navy, including against far faster Mirage fighters.

Lower your shields and surrender your ships

”We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

The Borg figure and bust built by Shawn Snyder aren’t about to inject nanoprobes into your bloodstream that turn you into a cyborg drone in their collective, but they definitely look the part.

London in a snow globe

The professional builders from Bright Bricks have a reputation to uphold for building big things for Christmas. In 2011 their 38 ft brick-built Christmas tree dazzled travelers passing through St. Pancras Station in London and set a record for being the world’s largest LEGO tree. Last year they built the world’s largest LEGO Advent Calendar for Covent Garden. This year they’ve built a fantastic collection of London landmarks to go inside the world’s largest LEGO snow globe. It measures an impressive 3m x 3m x 3m (10ft x 10ft x 10ft). It’s quite possibly the only LEGO snow globe and neither the snow nor the globe are made of LEGO, but who cares?

Snow gets blown through the globe and it has a tunnel down the middle that visitors can walk through, to be pretty much surrounded by it and to possibly feel a bit like London mayor Boris Johnson did in Feb 2009, when one of the largest snowfalls in recent history dumped 20 cm of white flakes on his city, bringing it to a stand-still.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Bright Bricks workshop in early October, when this project had just gotten underway. It must be tempting to cut some corners (perhaps even literally) here and there when building professionally for an audience that largely consists of people who don’t build with LEGO and who may not appreciate all the intricacies, but these are high-quality models. Having seen some of the builds at an early stage, I was very impressed by the level of detail and the clever build techniques that went into them.

The snow globe is on display at Covent Garden London until early January.

Four score and seven years ago...

This 19th of November marks the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The Battle of Gettysburg, which took place several months before, was the bloodiest battle of the American civil war and many of the dead were hastily buried in temporary graves. They were subsequently reburied in what was to become the Gettysburg National Cemetery. The Address was one of several speeches that marked the official consecration of the cemetery.

Gary Brooks (Gary the Procrastinator), who is no stranger to TBB, has expertly recreated the scene of President Lincoln giving the speech. At the time, the reception of the speech was mixed, but it has gained a prominent place in the history and culture of the United States.

Battlefield taxis

For some reason, a lot of military builders choose to build their military vehicles in dark grey. I suspect that it is because more suitable colors, such as tan, dark green or olive green, are expensive and because relatively few parts are made in them. Of course, if you do want a color that is available in vast quantities, you could always opt for a United Nations color scheme. This is exactly what Project Azazel has done for two of his new vehicles: an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and a Armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle (AIFV).

The M113 was developed in the mid-fifties, when the US Army needed a new Armored Personnel Carrier. It had to be smaller and lighter than existing vehicles, so that it could be transported aboard the then-new C-130 Hercules airlifter. The key to keeping the weight of the M113 down was a new welding technique that allowed using aluminum for the armor instead of steel. It first entered production in the 60s and is still in use with the US Army and many export customers all over the world. It also spawned many different versions, including the AIFV. This was a more modern and more heavily armed version. It wasn’t adopted by the US Army, but was further developed for export customers, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey and South Korea.

One thing I like about the model vehicles, besides their refreshing white paint scheme, is that they don’t appear to be ridiculously large.

The cars are the stars

Back in June, I posted a collection of Eighties film and TV vehicles, which at that time consisted of four cars (and fifth one that wasn’t in the picture). Lots of people offered me suggestions for which vehicles to build next and I kept going.

Top row from left to right: American Graffiti, The A-Team, Back to the Future, Batman (1989), Blues Brothers, The Dukes of Hazzard; middle row: Ghostbusters, Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Inspector Morse, Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., Miami Vice; bottom row: Mr. Bean, Only Fools and Horses, Starsky & Hutch, Terminator II Judgement Day, Tomb raider and Top Gear.

By now, a few months later, I’ve got 18 vehicles. They are not all from the Eighties anymore and a few British ones sneaked in. I am really enjoying building these. Unlike many LEGO car builders, I don’t have it in me to come up with my own cool or custom car designs. I tend to build scale models of existing vehicles and most are bog-standard production versions. The cars that are the stars in movies and TV series, however, are often a bit more flamboyant. Building them means I still get to build the scale models I like so much, but with a few extra sprinkles on top and the often funny characters that go with them. There are a few obvious vehicles still missing from my collection, such as cars from any of the James Bond movies, but I am not about to stop this any time soon.

About Ralph

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