Report: Palikkatakomo at Model Expo 2013

Finland is rather small country, or at least the population is, but we have a strong LUG, Palikkatakomo, to build exhibitions and shows that seem to get bigger and bigger every year. We had this years biggest exhibition in Helsinki at Model Expo, Northern Europe's biggest scale-model event, and it was impressive.

The whole area. Note one of the Kortelainen Brothers as a size comparision.

Last year we won the Best of the Show award, so this time we got a much bigger area on the Expo. It was 120 square meters (nearby bigger than my house!) and there were around 40 square meters of LEGO which weighted half a ton. Our main  showpiece was of course the city of Palikkala, which, according the knowledge of Kim Thomsen, member of TLC's Community Team who came to see our show, broke the world record of "Biggest LEGO town not based on baseplates but completely brick-built modules" or something. Okay, that isn't the most uncluttered record title ever, but it is a lot faster to just stack 48x48 baseplates to make huge areas than build everything on sturdy bases consisting of plate, plate, brick, plate.

DiscJet's The Dark Tower.

Palikkala was build by 30 AFOLs and TFOLs all around to country and there were definitely lot to see.I had my Humppa-Pub there, two modules, but it was a very little area compared to some AFOL's efforts of dozens (or hundreds?) of modules. LUG members Lönkka (Marting Lönqvist) and R2-D2 (Pekka Pihola) had heaps of modules around the town while "A-Klaani", a LEGO family from the eastern border, had their own quarter wing (More of that later).

The cool thing about Palikkala was that it seemed like a really working town: For 3000 citizens there was plenty of apartment building, farm for food supply, elementary school for education, military forces for national defence, obligatory hospital, fire brigade and police station, working road, rail, and river transportation, couple of skyscrapers (the taller one, Lönkka's Daily Planet, was 215 cm tall), management building, shops and outlets, a big outdoor market, many interesting landmark and, of course, plenty of attractions for entertainment: Pubs, a disco, a cinema district, entertainment park with a huge minifgure statue by PtLeskinen and a couple of sport events.

Awis's Imatrankoski, a model of an actual hydro-power plant on Finland.

Every city needs energy, and for that need there was Awis's (Ismo Aavaharju) Imatrankoski, a rapid with a hydro-power plant, a model of real place in eastern Finland. It was probably the most impressive single MOC on the show, weighing around 300 kg  and having the most realistic LEGO high-voltage lines I've ever seen. The MOC was built with help of hours of walking near the rapid and hundreds of photographs of the actual thing. Well played.

There were, of course, plenty of other stuff than the city. On the back of our area there was a viewing point of KastleVania 4, 146-minute excellent brickfilm by Hovinet team, with giveaway DVD copies of the film and a cool Vania-themed MOC frame on the television showing it. Next to it was Zwenkka's and his friend's NXT XBOX Disc Changer, which was joy to see on move.

Some of my Bionicle MOCs and other stuff.

 On the two other tables, there were plenty of MOCs based different genres and building systems. To mention a few these included some of my character builds, a gigantic remote-control tank (I sadly don't remember who the AFOL who built it was...), some vignettes, Markku Jääskeläinen's Groterdam, Humppakeksi's Humppalava with awesome audio tracks, Finland Brick's and Panzy Boe's TBB'd Battle of Amroth and, above all, Oskari Nääjärvi's mosaic of Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, Finnish Ex-President and one of the manliest men of history of the humankind. While Palikkala was, obviously, our main showpiece, these tables gave visitors a taste of more special stuff that can be achieved with LEGO.

Castle scene by unnamed FOL, Mario Brothers by Janne Kalliola's son, Oskari's Portrait of the President and Aaronix's Winter War mini-scale vignette.

I also spend some time with other LUG members outside the Expo. We had a assembly of Palikkatakomo RY (Registered association) and after that we spend a evening on Lönkka's basement full of LEGO. Kim Thomsen of Community team was also there, and he gave us a challenge to build a 8x8 stud microscale city or building using parts of 31011 Aviation Adventures. He chose three "winners" ( Roope Kyyny (Finland Brick), Janne Kalliolla (plastic) and me (hooray)). We kept the sets and the winners also gained some extra. I got Hulk polybag and three series 10 minifigures (no Mr.Gold). It was a very nice evening -and a whole weekend overall- to spend with people who share the love to Our Favorite Brick.

Finnish LUG Palikkatakomo team - I'm pretty much on the middle, right above the old train speed controller.

 All photos on this post are taken by Mikko Kortelainen. You can see much more of these beautiful shots at Hovinet Gallery.

-Pate-Keetongu