I've been buying up some one collections of lego lately - you know the deal - 'Tub of Lego for sale' you buy it cheap, get it home and then try to work out was sets are in there.
Well one of the people I bought Lego off lately must have had a thing for stuff that flies because amongst his stuff was two different helicopters and a plane.
Let's start with the plane - it's from 2010 and is set number 3178 and I think it's pretty cool, I like the yellow, black and white colour scheme, I really like the pontoons that it lands on - the mean that when it sits, it has centre of gravity that pushes the nose up, which feel about right.
It also comes with a minifig guy who has a nice plaid shirt, which is useful if you want to make a generic craft beer loving hipster guy.
Police helicopters are a bit of a stable of the Lego city line, they seem to bring one out every couple of years, this one is from 2008 and is set number 7741 - It's kinda cool with the four rotors at the top, the pretend searchlight on the front and big long tail out the back. Plus a policeman with 'coming to get ya' mirrored aviators - very terminator.
and last but certainly not least he had this awesome set from 2010 the Heliocpter and Limo set - the Helicopter itself is quite large, unfortunately most of the fuselage are large moulded panels so the build is way to easy, but the end product just makes you want to be a businessperson helicoptering to a meeting somewhere - so it's useful that they included a businessman minifig complete with briefcase.
and how do you get to and from the helicopter, well you'll need a stretch limo for that, complete with tinted windows and a limo driver - I've added the female business lady (with giant mobile phone) for the interests of gender equality.
What I do like about buying random collections of Lego, other than getting a heap of pieces cheap is that you get to build sets you wouldn't otherwise buy, and sometimes you discover cool things.