Lego Helicopter 8429

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

Here we have another model from my childhood. The Helicopter is the Primary design from the set and the plane is the secondary model. I have built this helicopter model a number of times, although the plane only once. Today was the second time I build the plane, except this time it is virtual.
When I was young this was one of my favourites. At the time it had the most complicated mechanism of all my Lego models. The crank on the side turns both the main rotor and the tail rotor. They are geared so they turn fairly quickly, although this is never going to take off.

The plane is a little simpler, it does not use quite as many components. The kit was forces on the helicopter, but most kits at the time had instructions for multiple models. This one has instructions for the helicopter and the plane. I actually don;t have the instructions for these any more. It took me quite a while searching the internet before I found the instructions online. The wheels on the plane are linked to the propeller on the front. As the plane is pushed along the ground it turn the propeller.
This was modeled in Autodesk Inventor. The level of detail on them is pretty much perfect, right down to the tiny "LEGO" text in the studs. If you download the native Inventor files the constraints are setup to work the mechanical linkages. As the files use the same components as my other Lego models you can put them in the folder and the assemblies will share files.
The STEP files can be downloaded separately, while the Inventor files are packaged into individual ZIP files. If you download both you can combine the files.