Lego Compatible Set Review: Keeppley K10211 Long March 2F and Shenzhou Spacecraft

 

Hello brick fans and rocket fans!

Keeppley/Enlighten has released their latest Chinese Aerospace sets for 2022 and I'll be reviewing one of the sets from the theme.  Today's set review is the Long March 2F rocket and Shenzhou spacecraft.  This is a kit that includes both spacecraft.

About the Long March rocket and Shenzhou spacecraft

The Long March 2F two stage rocket is part of the Chinese Long March family of rockets. It first went into service in 1999 to replace it's troublesome predecessor the Long March 2E.  It was used to successfully launch the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft carrying China's first astronaut into space.  Both of the Long March and Shenzhou spacecraft are still being used today.

Here are the respective wiki pages for both the Long March rocket and the Shenzhou spacecraft.

This Keeppley Long March 2F set is just one of several Aerospace sets that can be found on  Afobrick.com, one of the leading online retailers of Lego compatible building block sets.   Afobrick.com provides free worldwide shipping and free parts replacement if needed.

Here are the set details

The Brand:  Keeppley

Set name: K10211 Long March 2F and ShenZhou Spacecraft

Theme: Aerospace

Ages: 6+

Number of Pieces: approx 813 pcs (by my count)

Stickers:  None

Printed parts: Yes, quite a few!

Minifigures: None

Missing or deformed pieces:  None!

Extra parts leftover: Yes!

Check it out here:

https://afobrick.com/en-ca/products/keeppley-k10211-long-march-2f-and-shenzhou-spacecraft

Don't forget to save another 5% off if you use ITSNOTLEGO at checkout

I like the fact that Keeppley always numbers their bags of parts and each bag corresponds to the section you are building in the included instruction manual.  The Long March set also comes with 5 sectional bags, 2 supplementary parts bags and 2 16x16 baseplates.

Interestingly, although the Keeppley set number is designated as K10211, my manual says K10212.  

I'm wondering if I got the Chinese domestic version of the set, as the wording in the manual is in Chinese.  The first two pages of the manual look like the specifications for the spacecraft.  The rest of the manual and instructions is pretty much intuitive and language agnostic.

The manual has 70 pages with steps A1 thru A73 (pages 1 thru 34) building the Long March rocket and steps B1 thru B130 (pages 35 thru 70) building the Shenzhou spacecraft and it's stand.

The bricks in this set were very high quality and they clutched really well. As a result, I never had to use the brick separator that was included.

Step One: Launchpad

Step Two: Main stage rocket and booster rockets

Here are the four booster rockets that are easily clipped on to the main rocket fuselage.  As I soon came to discover, there are quite a few printed parts and no stickers whatsoever, yay!

The main rocket shown with boosters attached and installed onto the launchpad.  Yes, those are printed parts on the main rocket, not stickers.

Step Three: The Payload Section

The payload on the Long March rocket can either be the Shenzhou spacecraft or parts of the Tiangong space station.   The payload flaps and chinese flag on the fairing are printed parts.

Here is the assembled Long March 2F rocket which stands approximately 21 inches high.

Not sure why, but there isn't any printing on the reverse side of the rocket.

Step Four: Shenzhou spacecraft

Step four builds the Shenzhou spacecraft consisting of three modules. From top to bottom, these are the orbital module, the reentry module in the middle and the service module.  

Step Five: The Solar Panels and Display Stand

Printed pieces for the solar panels.

The trans blue stand is adjustable.

The solar panels can be swivelled.

I've placed one of my minifigures with the Shenzhou spacecraft so you can get  a sense of the scale of the assembled model.  I think the Shenzhou would have to be increased by another 3 to 4 times in size to be minifig scale (just guessing).

Oh, did you know that the Shenzhou spacecraft was featured in the movie Sandra Bullock/George Clooney movie Gravity?

After building the Long March rocket, I thought it would be fun to see if I can make it look like it was lifting off from the launchpad.  See the before and after pics below.

The rocket was originally secured to the base/launchpad via a short technic pin. I replaced it with a much longer pin to raise the rocket ship off of the base.  Then, I attached some flame pieces to each of the rocket and booster nozzles.  What do you think of the mod, does it make the rocket look better?  Let me know!

This was a satisfying building set that took less than a day to complete.  Although the parts count is not indicated anywhere, neither on the manual or on the Afobrick website.  I did a manual count of all the pieces used.

The Long March 2F rocket consisted of 400 pieces.  That included 195 pieces for the stand, 116 pieces to build the 4 booster rockets and 89 pieces for the main rocket.

The Shenzhou spacecraft is comprised of 421 pieces and 12 pieces of trans-blue parts for the stand.  Total part count came to 833 pieces, by my estimation.

I wanted to take some of my wife's cotton balls that she uses to clean her face, to simulate the smoke billowing from the rockets, but sadly, she said no.  😞

This set makes a nice display piece for anyone who enjoys model rockets.

One day, maybe, I will build a launch tower next to the rocket and increase the size of the launchpad.  But I will save that for another project.  Anyways, thx for looking.

Here's the set link again: https://afobrick.com/en-ca/products/keeppley-k10211-long-march-2f-and-shenzhou-spacecraft and remember to use my discount code itsnotlego to get another 5% off.

Bye!

Lego Compatible Funwhole Lakeside Lodge FH9004 Building Set Review

Welcome back to It's Not Lego, my little space on the web that looks at all of the latest building block sets and brands coming out of China.

Today, we'll be doing a review of the Funwhole Lakeside Lodge, set number is FH9004 with 1969 pieces and it even includes a light kit standard with the building.

Now available on Amazon. Or you can purchase it directly from the Funwhole website.   Find my special code at the bottom of this blog post to get an extra 10% off their website pricing.

The Lakeside Lodge is reminiscent of a fishing lodge that sits on the water's edge. It has a main floor that consists of a cozy living room and well equipped kitchen.  There is a nice loft space on the second floor that accomodates a bedroom complete with fireplace.  

Funwhole is a relatively new building block brand that is making a mark in the Lego space. According to their website, they've been around since 2014 but only recently started to market building sets, focusing on unique design and innovation.  Unlike other brick brands, all of the Funwhole kits come with lighting included in the price of the set.

This is my second Funwhole set, the first being the rustic Wood Cabin set FH9001, which I had a lot of fun building.  You can find my review of it here.  I did an in-depth review of their lighting kit on the Wood Cabin set, so I won't be reviewing the lighting in this post.  Just know that the lighting kit in the Lakeside Lodge works the same way.

I want to point out that there are a lot of brick brands out there right now, but it all comes down to their customer service and whether they stand behind their product. I had some issues with my kit and Funwhole customer service came through with flying colours more than once! (We will discuss in detail later).

It's so great that Funwhole shipped me the Lakeside Lodge building set in the original box.  The presentation and the pictures on the box are really nice.

Also included is a very thick and detailed instruction manual, and a small sticker sheet.   

Additionally, there are four resealable envelopes that contain all the lighting components to make the Lakeside Lodge extra special.  

The large instruction manual makes it easy to follow the steps, but I will say however, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain the right colour of the pieces because there are different colours of browns, tans and greens in this set.  In that case, I usually take a stab at it and hope for the best.

The Lakeside Lodge has a standard 32x32 stud footprint but instead of one single baseplate the foundation is composed of 4 16x16 plates.  Although not required, I constructed a MILS base underneath to make the flooring more rigid and easier to handle.  This is something that I've started doing to all of my modular buildings, so it's not due to any deficiency of this set in particular.

To build the set, there are six major steps and there are six bags of parts pertaining to each step.  Within each of the large numbered bags, there were several smaller bags of parts.

As I started to build, I noticed that there was something odd about the bags of parts I had received in step 1.  There was a duplication of some bags and missing others which prevented me from continuing the build.  

I took pictures of the bags I had and contacted Funwhole customer service through an Instagram DM.  They were very quick to respond and we figured out which bags were missing from the set.

Here's a complete breakdown of the component bags by section that Funwhole sent to me.  I was missing bags 1.1-3 and 1.1-4.  Funwhole immediately shipped out the missing parts to me, and I received them right after the chinese Golden Week holiday.

With the missing bricks in hand, I started making progress again.  As you can see from the above picture, the Lakeside Lodge set is a building that is located next to the water's edge.  I added some of my own minifigures just for fun.  As a reminder, there are six steps to the construction and this completes section 1.  Time to move on to section 2.

And then just as I thought everything was smooth sailing, this happened.  It looks like one of the parts bag had a bad accident and several of the pieces inside suffered some damage.

I let Funwhole know and within a week and a half, I had replacement bricks sent to me, quickly and painlessly.  Needless to say, I was really pleased with Funwhole's communication and promptness.

With the completion of section 2, the main structure of the Lakeside Lodge is apparent.

The interior consists of two rooms, the kitchen and the living room.  The kitchen features two cooktops, a fan hood, a coffee maker, a sink and loads of cupboards.

 The living room sports  couch with side table, TV and grandfather clock.  Behind the couch one finds a rack with hat, jacket and boots.  There's a small foyer which leads to the front door of the lodge.

Before we move on to the second floor, now's a good time to test the lighting on the main floor.  There's some accent lights in the water and one on the fishing dock.

There's several more lights inside and outside of the lodge as well.

Funwhole provides a battery pack and all of the lights and wiring, you just need to supply two double AA batteries to power the lights.

Jumping ahead to section 3, we have now completed the second floor bedroom.  In addition to the single bed, there is a side table, a bookshelf and a chair and desk with lamp.  The red light brick in the middle of the room will serve as a fireplace in an upcoming step.

Here's how the Lakeside Lodge is shaping up before we move on to section 4.

Section 4 sees the completion of one side of the rooftop and dormer window.

A tree with colourful leaves rises from the ground.

Section 5 builds some more of the side roof panels.

Section 6 finishes off the roof and chimney.  And with that, the Lakeside Lodge is finished!   Time to take it all in.

I gotta say that this set really pops with the lighting.  Some bonus shots follow.

The Funwhole Lakeside Lodge does not come with any minifigures, but it sure brings life to the set if you add your own.

So in summary, the Funwhole Lakeside lodge is 1969 pieces and rated for ages 8 and above as per the box and manual information.  The set bundles in a great lighting kit that if purchased separately would probably cost at least $30 to $40 more. 

Funwhole uses the same lighting system as Briksmax.  For a detailed primer of how the lighting kits work, please check out my blog post here.

It comes with a sticker sheet (which I didn't use) and a really thick instruction manual.  Although there wasn't any page numbers, there were a total of 555 steps spread out over 6 sections.  Bonus tools include a brick separator and tweezers to pick up those small pieces.

I had some really bad luck in that my set was missing parts and also had deformed parts. But Funwhole made it right with their excellent communication and super quick replacement of the affected parts.

Want to add the Funwhole Lakeside Lodge FH9004 to your brick collection?  You can find it on Amazon. Or you can purchase it directly from the Funwhole website.

Because I've partnered with Funwhole, they are offering a further 10% off your purchase price by using code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout.   How great it that?

 Thanks for visiting and see you next time!  Bye!