My submission to an official LEGO Ideas competition in summer 2023 for vintage transportation: The Viking Airship, a.k.a. “Coast Raiders in the Sky”. This is an original concept I created blending classical aviation with the fantasy element of Viking mythos. The Viking longboat is suspended by a Zeppelin envelope and propelled by a crude propeller engine, flying over the Nordic landscape!

The major challenge of this whole project was building the red and white Zeppelin envelope, which went through numerous revisions and had several flaws. Building it consisted of an internal circular chain of hinge plates, which then had curved slopes and plates over top of it to form the tube shape. I wanted the red and white envelope to be much larger, but unfortunately the large size and weight made it extremely cumbersome which made it difficult to balance on top of the ship. The current smaller envelope is simply suspended from two brown ship ladders on the sides, and has chains on the front and back for stability. After building the ground scenery, the final touch was adding floating clouds to mask the transparent pillars holding up the ship.

When conceptualizing this model for the competition, I made this diorama specifically to commemorate my rejection from the 2003 Red Bull Flugtag amateur aircraft competition in New York. To make a long story short, as a kid I dreamed of building large wooden flying ships, and then as a teenager I conceptualized making homemade airships using hot air blimp technology. Then I submitted my plans for a hot air ship to Red Bull in 2003 for the Flugtag event – but sadly wasn’t chosen as a contender. Since it’s been exactly 20 years ago this summer, I felt it best to at least make another attempt at submitting yet another airship to a different contest. Unfortunately to my shock, this submission didn’t make it to the final rounds for voting in the competition on LEGO Ideas.

-Baron “I coulda been a contender” von Brunk