A talk I gave to Lego fans attending Brickfair Virginia 2016, sharing my tips and tricks on how to build scale models of military aircraft in LEGO.

1. Building military aircraft
Ralph Savelsberg

2. Military aircraft are among the most
impressive and complicated machines
Grumman F-14A Tomcat, Wings over the Rockies museum, Denver

3. I have been building aircraft for a long
time
and I have built rather a lot of them

4. Pictures of my models have been
published in books and magazines

5. I designed the aircraft for Ed Diment’s
USS Intrepid
The model is on display at the
Intrepid Museum in New York

6. Contents
• Scale
• Shape
– Building compound curves
– Building weird angles
• Working Features
– Landing gears
– Cockpits
• Camouflage
• Bringing it all together

7. What size should your aircraft be?
1/100 1/43 (minifig scale)
1/36 1/22

8. It is your choice, but most of mine are
built to a scale of 1/36
• large enough for lots
of details and working
features
• Retractable landing
gears are relatively
easy
• small enough to allow
building big aircraft

9. Shape can be very complex
Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, U.S. Air Force
B-1B ‘Bone’
• Difficult angles
• Curvature in multiple directions

10. For compound curves, the solution is
making small steps
Shape of cross section changes only slowly along the
length
F-14A Tomcat

11. On larger models, I plan this before I
start building
B-1B ‘Bone’

12. LEGO make many different wedge plates
that help with the angles

13. Sometimes wedge plates are enough
RA-5C Vigilante
Su-27 ‘Flanker-B’

14. But there are angles for which there
isn’t a suitable wedge plate

15. By combining wedge plates we can make
different angles

16. We need parts to connect them
Plate hinges

17. Presto!

18. Sometimes it helps to mount (almost)
the entire wing at an angle
Because the engines are not at an angle,
the central lower bit of the wing is straight
E-2C Hawkeye

19. Sometimes only part of the wing is
mounted at an angle
F-16C ‘Viper’A-10 ‘Warthog’

20. This technique has made it into an
official set
The set was designed by AFOL Mike Psiaki

21. A few plate hinges aren’t always strong
enough
Official USAF photograph, Senior Airman Sarah Shaw
B-52H

22. Some triangles have special properties:
Pythagorean triples
3
4
5
Pythagoras
(3,4,5)
(5,12,13)
(7,24,25)
(8,15,17)
( . , . , . )
𝑐2 = 𝑎2 + 𝑏2
a
b
c

23. We can make triangles in LEGO using
Pythagorean triples
3
4

24. F-105 uses (3,4,5)
• Triple gives proper angle for trailing edge
• Leading edge built using 2x4 wedge plates

25. Wings need to be strong to carry the
weight of the model

26. B-52 uses (8,15,17) divided in half
Leading edge built using 12x3 wedge plates

27. The wing is pretty much rock solid

28. Working features add realism
SB2C Helldiver

29. The way the landing gear works is
usally based on the real design
F-14A

30. The aircraft designers have already
solved much of the problem for you
F-111A

31. Opening canopies
Usually, the canopy is attached to a strut that slides out
and allows the canopy to hinge
RA-5C Vigilante F-14A Tomcat

32. This even works for the weird canopy
of the F-111

33. Randomly mixing parts with different colours will not
work, because camouflage is not random
Building camouflage

34. Simple rules for building camouflage
1. The border between colours should never be
a straight line of more than 3 or 4 studs long
or plates thick before it changes direction
2. Once a demarcation line has changed
direction once, it should change again as
soon as possible
3. The contrast between the colours should be
small

35. USAF South-East Asia camouflage
• Dark green
• Dark tan
• (old) dark grey
F-100D Super Sabre F-105D Thunderchief

36. A few more exotic combinations
Israeli Air Force
• Tan
• Dark tan
• Sand green
Russian Air Force
• Reddish brown
• Dark tan
• Dark green
IAI F-4E Kurnass 2000 Su-25 ‘Frogfoot-A

37. Bringing it all together
I always use blueprints to get an idea of the shape

38. And I gather reference books
These are some of the ones I used for the B-52

39. I make drawings to work out the
geometry and the size in studs

40. I always build difficult bits first

41. Top tips
1. Chose a scale that suits you (1/36 is good)
2. Don’t be afraid to build at weird angles
3. Build complicated shapes using small steps in every
direction
4. Add working features for added realism
5. Stay close to the original: its designers have already
solved most problems for you
6. Before you start building, do your research
7. Make a plan (and stick to it)
8. Build the difficult bits first

42. If you do all this, you can get pretty
close to the right shape