Home › Day 29: LL-998 – The Sapphire Condor.

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Day 29: LL-998 – The Sapphire Condor.

29 March, 2009 - 00:19 — Doctor-Sinister

This immense ship from Ed Diment certainly ensures he lives up to his online handle of "LEGO Monster".  LL-998 is massive, heavy and incredibly detailed from top to bottom, and it contains a surprise for anyone foolish enough to engage it in battle as this video will attest.

 

LL-998

 

Motto: ‘Making your bad day worse.’

“When you absolutely, positively have to drop on to a hot LZ, accept no substitute” – The words of Brigadier General Knackerjacker after his successful campaign to have the Federation Raptor assault ships reinstated to full service with the fleet.  The LL998s (Ultramarine Osprey, Prussian Eagle and Sapphire Condor) were moth-balled nearly a decade before the Ugokin threat materialized.  Replaced by smaller more efficient military transports with dedicated fighter support, the Raptors were considered too expensive to maintain.



With the rise of the Ugokin menace however, General Knackerjacker put forward a winning case that these mighty assault ships be upgraded and brought back into the fleet, no matter what the cost.  As a result, the Sapphire Condor became the first of these behemoths to re-enter service.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/legomonster/3393648354/in/set-72157613002798583/

 

The Sapphire Condor (along with her sisters) is the largest transport and assault ship ever used by the Federation.  She and her sisters are able to transport loads of up to 1,000 tons and land these on almost any surface, having penetrated from orbit.  The Condor is now fully equipped with twin annihilator pulse cannons; a compliment of twelve ‘Deep Thunder’ ground strike missiles (on two sextuple rotary launchers); eight ‘Star Streak’ anti-ship missiles; two twin ion blaster self defense turrets and a full spread of countermeasure systems.  The Condor and her sisters are designed to penetrate heavily defended airspace and land heavy military hardware or up to 500 fully armed and equipped combat troops.
LL-998

 

Ed's Notes:

Peter Reid (Legoloverman) had been on at me to do some Neo Classic Space for a while, but other projects had kept me away.  Then, when I heard about the 30th anniversary idea I knew I had to do something.  I had initially been working on a power functions ground vehicle, but wasn’t really getting anywhere with it.  Then Ralph Savelsberg (Mad Physicist) was around one evening and drew a sketch of a ground vehicle that fitted the bill.  I persuaded Ralph to take on this project and so was born LURCH.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/legomonster/3392834637/in/set-72157613002798583/

LL-998

At about the same time I started playing around with ship designs.  My first attempt proved too unwieldy, so I scaled it down and began to create a MKII spaceship.  This began to progress fairly well, but I wasn’t happy with the vehicles that it might carry.  By this stage LURCH was progressing well in Ralph’s hands and I came to the inexorable conclusion that the only answer was to have my new ship carry LURCH.  This meant redesigning the ship (now MKIII).  Thankfully I was able to take most of MKII and simply expand the hangar space.
LL-998

Now MKIII was underway, she needed a suitable name.  I latched on to the idea of Pete’s that picking up on the Classic Space blue in the name was a good idea (hence sapphire) then add this to a large bird (condor) and there you have it!  After about three months building and tinkering the LL-998 was complete.
LL-998
This whole creation owes a lot to members within Brickish:

Peter Reid for the initial inspiration
James Shields for the Neo Classic site and pushing us all along
Ralph Savelsberg for the wonderful LURCH
Stuart Crawshaw who designed the ship’s engines
Dr Sinister for the photography, editing and film work that you see

Oh, and of course, not forgetting Annie Diment for being a sounding-board and vetoing some of my more crappy ideas!

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