Lego Carbon Racers: Azure Aviator

 Here's my take on a Lego Tiny Turbos-style helicopter, the Azure Aviator! I'd say it's more complex than the original versions, and to me, it's an improvement.

Here are a couple of major differences right off the bat: To the best of my knowledge, Tiny Turbos helicopters didn't use those kinds of rotor blades (they used plates instead), and the landing skids are a different design too.

Now that I think of it, I've never owned a Tiny Turbos set that had a helicopter. While building this, I was more-or-less trying to replicate the look of one based on sight.

Expecting a GIF where it's just the rotors spinning and not the whole aircraft? I'm not that good at GIF-making, sorry.

When making this model, I was thinking about this big yellow helicopter from Lego Racers set 8152, "Speed Chasing." Man, I wanted this set when I was young, but I ended up with set 8148, "EZ-Roadster" instead. I'm not complaining, mind you; the roadster was a terrific model, and now that I'm getting a closer look at Speed Chasing, that police car looks fragile, especially the way those translucent plates are applied on top. I'm certain there's an alternate universe where I'm gushing about how I got this set and it was the greatest thing ever, but this is the universe where I couldn't find the set in stores and my parents saved a few bucks. It's a pretty good universe, really.

We start right away with this model's funky skids--or at least their foundation.

It was a tricky process to synthesize a blueprint for this model because it was built kinda weird from the get-go.

If you want to forgo that 2x1 slope and 2x2 plate in favor of something that looks like a tiny pilot, be my guest. Just don't forget to show me a picture of it when you're done.

See this? Build it twice, and then stick the second one on the other side of the fuselage! Wasn't that simple? Yes, but I'm still going to show the page where you do the exact same thing.

Here's the unnecessary page. I hope it has enriched your life somehow.

Don't mind me; just thinking back to the days when uploading Lego model photos via my family's slow wifi took about a million years. Some things really have changed for the better.

Like I said, I built this model all weird.

Hey, see that grey piece in step 15, the one with the big pin in the middle? Does it exist in black? I'm sure it does, but I don't have it. If you do, use that.

This about covers the fuselage build. Next, we have the skids, rotors, and tail...

Huh, I thought I covered the main rotors first. I guess it doesn't take me long to forget my own building directions.

Sick of these steps that cut off part of the model? So am I, but my options were to either shrink it too small or make individual pages, stretching out the directions. As we all should've learned from the Green Giant Trailer model, I hate stretching out directions.

At last, rotors! If you don't have blades like these, I recommend substituting them--and the hinge pieces they're attached to--with two 1x8 black, flat plates. I probably would've used them on my model, but if I had them, they were otherwise employed.

Heck, the blade pieces I used weren't even black. They're dark grey, but I changed it for the model. "Hey," I can hear you saying, "why didn't you make that dark grey pin-piece black too?" Because I didn't, that's why. This blog is my dominion, and I'm an arbitrary ruler.

If you haven't guessed already, you could just repeat this step on the other side of the model.

See? Just like this.

Same deal here, but...

...if I had to sink PC processing power into producing these pages, y'all are just going to have to sit through them. I mean, you won't have to sit through any more right now; this is the end of the blueprint.

That's it for the Azure Aviator! Barring unforeseen delays, come back next week for another flying-type Carbon Racer. This one, though, hasn't been seen as a Tiny Turbo before...