Price: $23.17
From the Publisher
Why Build Brick Planes?
How to Build Brick Airplanes is about creating models of a selection of real aircraft covering more than one hundred years of flight. The model-making skills applied to aircraft are just an offshoot of the wider STEM toolkit used by engineers to do their job every day. In my work as an automotive engineer for the Ford Motor Company, I used mathematics, mechanics, structures, materials engineering, and importantly, problem solving to create motor vehicles. I have the opportunity as part of Ford’s commitment to STEM education in schools to lead LEGO Robotics programs, in which this STEM toolkit is shared with young people who may one day follow a career in these areas. How to Build Brick Airplanes is my opportunity to share my interests in the fields of aeronautical engineering and LEGO model creation with a much wider audience.
Sections of How To Build Brick Airplanes: Detailed LEGO Designs for Jets, Bombers, and Warbirds
Section 1: Miniplanes
We begin with Miniplanes. Not planes that carry only one person (or none), but models built in a very small scale. All the planes in this section are modelled from 1:90 (Fokker DR.1) through to 1:125 (P-51 Mustang). This scale means it is not possible to include a LEGO minifig in the aircraft, but they are a good scale to sit on a shelf or be mounted on a stand. The image at left shows the vast size of the B-2 Spirit bomber—it is close in scale to the other planes present, though the two WWI planes would be even smaller if they were at identical scale! The B-2 is a very challenging build, however, and has as many parts as the models in the Intermediate section. This chapter follows chronological order, in part to support the increasing size and complexity of the models, but in checking the specification tables, you will also see the rapid development of power and speed between 1914 and 1974.
Section 2: Intermediate
There are five aircraft in this section. Three are propeller-driven, modelled in the same 1:32 scale, covering the period between WWI and WWII. Prior to WWII, jet aircraft had been in early development, but both jets and propeller aircraft evolved quickly, and jets did not achieve an advantage until after the war; from then on power and speed increased rapidly. The two jet aircraft in the book, modelled in 1:48 scale, bookend the jet age. The Dassault Mirage III was flying less than a decade after the war, and was capable of nearly twice the speed of sound. The Lockheed-Martin F-35 is the very latest aircraft designed in the Western hemisphere, though it is barely faster than the Mirage sixty years its junior. Airframe competitiveness has become about much more than sheer speed. Modern electronics and materials engineering deliver stealth capabilities and communications technologies (called avionics).
Section 3: Advanced
There are only two models in Section 3. I encourage you build these only after completing the Section 2 models. The P-38 in particular has many complex technical features and will keep the builder busy for at least a couple of days. The two models here may not be well known to LEGO hobbyist builders, but they should make a welcome addition to any aviation enthusiast’s collection. These two aircraft represent the pinnacle of their times, the fifty-year-old Blackbird still being the fastest aircraft ever made. They are both large models: the SR-71 shares the same 1:48 scale as the two jets in Section 2, and the P-38 Lightning, modelled at Miniland scale (1:21), with over 2,000 parts, is possibly the most advanced LEGO brick aircraft available with instructions. At this size, modelling in LEGO becomes a mechanical challenge. Many of the same issues confronting aeronautical engineers are also present in building these models—for example, how to keep the wings from snapping off!
Build. Learn. Play
Publisher : Motorbooks; Illustrated edition (October 9, 2018)
Language : English
Paperback : 192 pages
ISBN-10 : 0760361649
ISBN-13 : 978-0760361641
Item Weight : 1.33 pounds
Dimensions : 8.55 x 0.9 x 10 inches
Price: $23.17
