42145 Airbus Rescue Helicopter MODs and Improvements

[jb70]

My MOC is also based on the @efferman MOC. Many thankx to you for this brilliant redesign of the steering mechamism, works much better that way!

Based on that I made the following optimizations:

1. Prevent left/right control levers from flipping over by using 3L beams instead of 2L liftarms. With this change the 5L beams will always stay on top.

 

 

2. Add additional support to the collective pitch control allowing 2 additional friction pins to keep the selected leverage while using cyclic pitch control. 

3. Modified front hub using an "illegal" connection with 7L axes very slightly bend, but fitting nice and adding stability to the hub. Plus some minor design changes.

On 11/19/2022 at 10:10 PM, CelloFellow said:

And this is my proposed improvement. Some parts are shown with bright colors just for clarity, but they are all really black or light bluish gray. With this arrangement, the two joysticks are now rigidly locked together for roll control (left/right) just as they are for pitch (forward/back). I seems to fit well, and works fine. Can anyone see if I have overlooked something, or why this is not a correct mod? I couldn't see any reason the original design is preferred. But I'm no helicopter expert or master LEGO builder either!

@CelloFellow Great improvement!

I modified it this way to avoid collisions with the 65487 Technic Pin Connector next to it:

Finally I made some reinforcements to the tail:

 

And some reinforcement to the landing gear:

 

[jb70]

All these changes have been included in 42145 Pimp up my Helicopter:

[SNIPE]

What about putting one of these inside of each 6Lsuspension arm:

It would hold the suspention arm on the 5L beam slightly better since the axle is replaced with a frictionless pin

[efferman]

good idea

[CelloFellow]

On 1/16/2023 at 5:57 PM, jb70 said:

...

Based on that I made the following optimizations:

[...]

@CelloFellow Great improvement!

I modified it this way to avoid collisions with the 65487 Technic Pin Connector next to it:

[...]

@jb70: Thanks for including and acknowledging my little improvement to the left/right roll control coupling. And great catch to fix the interference I had overlooked. I'm tempted to tear down and rebuild to incorporate all the improvements you accumulated. By the way, I enjoyed building the 42115 Lamborghini with your improvements a while ago.

[nerdsforprez]

 

On page 6 you will see a video where I popped two L PF motors in 42145.  Improved the rotor speed a lot.  In the previous video, with headphones, you could hear the whipping of the rotors. Well, I replaced the Lego PF motors with those by Mould King and they whip much faster. Great sound. Listen with or without headphones.  Doesn't matter.  You can hear the whipping of the rotors pretty good.  Powered by BuWizz 3.0 on Ludicrous mode.

 

 

Edited April 1, 2023 by nerdsforprez

[q335r49]

On 10/16/2022 at 10:10 AM, blbills said:

I wanted to share my modified 42145 H175 Airbus Helicopter.  I was fortunate enough to pick this up on the release day back in August and build it per the instructions first.  First off, fantastic build.  I've been a collector of Technic helicopter sets since my youth and this one by far takes the cake.  However, as a pilot, there were a few elements that bothered me.  It started with the bulky rotorhead and the significant height it protruded above the helicopter.  After that I had a desire to reduce the functional slop in all the linkages and structure (namely the tail assembly and rotor shaft).  At that point I was essentially starting from scratch and made an effort to more resemble the full scale aircraft.  Below is a high-level list of some of the modifications I made.  I hope you all enjoy!

• Lower profile rotor head
• Reduced height main shaft
• Reduced the height of the entire helicopter by 1 stud (this required significant modifications throughout)
• Removed horizontal tail supports and cleaned up tail area
• Added additional friction pins to the tail assembly to improve rigidity
• Added additional support to the base of the main shaft to greatly reduce lateral slop in rotor head
• Implemented a variation of @efferman's cyclic and collective modifications to improve controllability (this required ground-up redesign of the internals to include the landing gear retract mechanism)
• Reduced profile winch mechanism for a more scale-like appearance
• Redesigned nose section to make it more streamline and scale-like
• Replaced the black pitot tubes with gray (no such thing as a colored pitot tube in the aviation world) Also the black ones would occasionally interfere with cyclic actions
• Major overhaul of the upper section of the helicopter (while maintaining the aft removable cowling over the engine assembly) to make it more scale-like
• Removed camera sensor and search light (just because I like the streamlined look without)
• Lots of color matching to improve cosmetics

 

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAbgMq

 

Thanks for sharing all the mods! This was the first technic set I've bought in about 25 years. I broke out the old legos with the toddler and I still had an old catalog with the 8856 helicopter. I remember that was the set I really wanted back in the day, but it was obviously absurdly priced at the time for a 15 yo, one thing led to another, and eventually I splurged on the 42145. It took me daaaays to build mostly because I tore it apart a couple of times trying to debug the foward-tilting swash plate. Eventually (after playing lots of games with switching out friction / non-friction pins), I realized it was simply that the front tilting mechanism was too low. I just ordered the parts off of webbrick for the prop mods so I'm excited to get that installed.

Anyways, there is about 5% overlap with the technic sets from 30 years ago, so really few technic pieces to "play with", so I guess I'm mostly limited to studio for design for now. That being said, has anyone tried creating the sleek front / back cover of blbills above, such as in Studio, i.e., so I can get a parts inventory, or anything close for that matter? It looks like the whole thing hinges foward to reveal the mechanism, which is pretty awesome. If not, I might have to try to dive into Studio myself.

Edited December 4, 2023 by q335r49

[SNIPE]

This is my dream 42145 version:

• 40L blades from 10327 dune orthocopter
• 1 small angular motor for winch
• 1 small angular motor for landing gear
• 1 small angular motor for blade collective pitch control
• 1 small angular motor for blade cyclic pitch control
• 1 buggy motor for blades and engines.
• PF LEDs
• New gearbox parts for the 2 speed gearbox. and function selector gearboxes
• Powered via buwizz 3.0 with an  C+ to PF adapter cable for one of the motors

The gearbox may have to go but since I like it I wanna try to keep it, same for the levers for controlling the blades. Therefore you can use it as a manual set still , or you can operate it electronically.

Not pictured above but, also these small mods + what others on EB have came up with:

It also has manual swivel control (L/R) while hiding the otherwise exposed axle for the rear blades.

I got the front wheel to pivot but couldn't find an easy way to fit a spring in so I scrapped that :( (it was almost impossible to have "suspension", landing gear, and front wheel steering).

 

Edited February 23 by SNIPE

[HydroWorld Outlook]

@SNIPE That's a really cool mod idea you have there. But keep in mind that elongated rotor blades may not clear the rear stabilizer fin when spinning if the tail boom is not extended further back, since the 42145 was originally designed for the shorter previous helicopter blades. And a longer tail would increase weight at the back of the model, so you would likely need to either extend the undercarriage or use thicker wheels for landing gear that can support the additional weight. Plus, the fuselage would likely need to be enlarged or widened substantially to accommodate the extra motors, not to mention incorporate space for the Buwizz 3.0 unit.

Edited March 1 by HydroWorld Outlook

[SNIPE]

17 hours ago, HydroWorld Outlook said:

@SNIPE That's a really cool mod idea you have there. But keep in mind that elongated rotor blades may not clear the rear stabilizer fin when spinning if the tail boom is not extended further back, since the 42145 was originally designed for the shorter previous helicopter blades. And a longer tail would increase weight at the back of the model, so you would likely need to either extend the undercarriage or use thicker wheels for landing gear that can support the additional weight. Plus, the fuselage would likely need to be enlarged or widened substantially to accommodate the extra motors, not to mention incorporate space for the YBuwizz 3.0 unit.

Yes, I Wonder if anyone has those new blades as well as this set built so we can test it out. (I opted not to buy the dune orthocopter)