Overview of the Osprey Tiltrotor Constructor, or What to Give a Boy for the New Year

I imme­di­ate­ly told my son “No, I won’t buy it”, imme­di­ate­ly decid­ing to myself that I would def­i­nite­ly buy it, but hide it. This tiltro­tor looked too tempt­ing. As a result, at the end of the quar­ter, a gift was giv­en to him (and to him­self) and two boys aged 10 and 10++ began to col­lect it. The thing turned out great, take a look and see for your­self.

The real Osprey was made for a very long time, with sac­ri­fices and colos­sal expens­es. The fate of the Lego mod­el was also not easy (it was quick­ly removed from sale due to com­plaints from paci­fists). But on Aliex­press you can still buy this design­er for inex­pen­sive.

Packing and kit

The par­cel was deliv­ered to the point of issue in a well-known chain store. White pim­ply tight­ly packed pack­age.

Inside 4 bags, num­bered accord­ing to the stages of assem­bly, a sheet with decal stick­ers and a set of blades. The print qual­i­ty of the stick­ers is excel­lent. Since this is, in fact, a Tech­nic series, there are no lit­tle men in the kit.

Ah, yes. There are also instruc­tions includ­ed, of course. Thick, detailed and visu­al, with excel­lent print­ing. Fur­ther in the review I will show the degree of detail.

Well, let’s go.

Assembly

Here, by the way, you can see a com­bat heli­copter already devoid of wings from the past review — a good game mod­el with lit­tle men. I’ll show them both in a direct com­par­i­son lat­er.

Plas­tic is good, does not stink, not cheap to the touch. Visu­al­ly and to the touch 100% sim­i­lar to the known pro­to­type. There are just a lot of dif­fer­ent tech­ni­cal details here.

In fair­ness, of all the details, only one with flash came across, I had to sym­bol­i­cal­ly pol­ish it.

And one more dif­fi­cul­ty. Well, this detail is by no means amenable to chil­dren’s hands, I had to artic­u­late with the help of my dad.

Right there, just, I can illus­trate the clar­i­ty of the guide. It is exhaus­tive­ly com­pelling. A sep­a­rate plus is that the assem­bled part here becomes dis­col­ored and it becomes clear­ly vis­i­ble where the part goes at this assem­bly step. Over the past 8 years, sev­er­al dozen man­u­als have passed through my hands, and these are just a few, alas.

First, we assem­ble the frame, here my son did not have any dif­fi­cul­ties at all.

At this step, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised that the wheels can retract upwards, as they do in real life.

So, the main part of the frame is assem­bled.

It remains only to assem­ble the base of the cab­in with the wheel and con­nect both parts into one.

Voila!

What’s next in order? It is nec­es­sary to sheathe the cab­in so that it looks exact­ly like a cab­in. At the same time, floats appear under the wings (if the descrip­tion is not clear, these are bulges on the sides, above the wheels).

Ready!

Here, how­ev­er, the wings are already vis­i­ble, but oh well.

The cock­pit is poor­ly detailed. How­ev­er, in the game, all the tex­tures will be streamed by the most pow­er­ful graph­ics card in the world — the chil­dren’s brain. There will be instru­ments, and cracks from hits in the cock­pit canopy — every­thing will be.

Some­how, but the cock­pit man­ages to fit two pilots.

Osprey has a very promis­ing part for the game­play, name­ly a mov­able descend­ing ramp/ramp/gangway. And this is where dis­ap­point­ment await­ed me. If you assem­ble accord­ing to the man­u­al, then the motor, which I did not buy, should open and close the ramp. But it’s impos­si­ble to open it man­u­al­ly, there is a screw gear going through just here the part with the flash, which I showed above. In prin­ci­ple, if you remove it, then the ques­tion will come to naught.

This is how it all looks ready for land­ing.

So we went through the part here, which did not cause any dif­fi­cul­ties for my son and required my min­i­mal inter­ven­tion. Then the fun begins — wings with a block of gears. I will not describe each step, I will only give the result so that you under­stand how painstak­ing this process is.

When assem­bled, it looks, of course, impres­sive.

But it looks much, much more mind-blow­ing when first con­nect­ed to the hull.

It’s time to fin­ish the tail. Here I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the mobil­i­ty of the flap. See, here it is slight­ly bent down.

Then it became only to “sheath” the wings and con­nect them to the engine nacelles. At this stage, the son just seri­ous­ly messed up. The fact that the nacelles were attached crooked­ly and did not turn togeth­er, I dis­cov­ered only after the assem­bly was com­plet­ed. I had to bring all this to mind, sit­ting in the coun­try with­out instruc­tions. And why? But because it was nec­es­sary to be atten­tive, and not turn on anoth­er Saba­ton clip every few min­utes and run with the dog. How­ev­er, chil­dren are chil­dren. The main and most dif­fi­cult — i.e. he assem­bled the block of gears him­self.

Actu­al­ly, the elec­tric motor that I did not buy rotates the gears, the gears trans­mit force to the nacelles and the blades spin. As far as I under­stand, the gon­do­las them­selves also change posi­tions, mov­ing from heli­copter mode to air­plane mode.

Well, that’s all. The Bell Boe­ing v‑22 Osprey tiltro­tor is ready!

This is such an impres­sive design.

The com­bat heli­copter men­tioned at the begin­ning of the review, which is rather big by the way, looks like an unse­ri­ous kid against its back­ground -)

General impressions

The son was very pos­i­tive. Ini­tial­ly, he was count­ing on a ver­sion of the Osprey made from clas­sic cubes, not from the tech series. As a result, hav­ing start­ed the assem­bly, he got involved in it and con­tin­ued to col­lect it with great inter­est. Then he blunt­ly admit­ted that at first he was glad rather out of polite­ness, and then he real­ized that this was a real­ly cool and inter­est­ing con­struc­tor to assem­ble, he got involved and already assem­bled it with hon­est enthu­si­asm. Well, I … I was near­by and some­times helped. Now, as in the case of count­less oth­er design­ers he col­lect­ed, I (and, I hope, my son too) will remem­ber those 2–3 glo­ri­ous evenings spent, which we spent togeth­er on the sec­ond floor of the dacha. Con­struc­tor, tasty treats, end­less Saba­ton marathon, a kit­ten scat­ter­ing parts and all sorts of talk about life.

Was this price of this design­er worth it? Undoubt­ed­ly.

Upon return­ing to the apart­ment, the son suc­cess­ful­ly test­ed Osprey in action. A spet­snaz detach­ment was brought in, evac­u­at­ed, and in the process still repelled an attack by a gauss can­non from flak­turms. Also, the korzhikha was fright­ened and fired more than once, a duel with the X‑Wing was held, and all sorts of oth­er things. But that’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

Ah, yes. All the details were enough. Some small mar­gin even remained on top. With the excep­tion of a one-time grind­ing of the flash, there were no jambs. The design­er is of high qual­i­ty, inter­est­ing to assem­ble. I think that it is quite pos­si­ble for a boy of about 12 years old to assem­ble it with­out much expe­ri­ence, or even a junior high school stu­dent with assem­bly expe­ri­ence (as in my case).

Per­haps it was worth over­pay­ing and tak­ing a com­plete set with an engine. Now I’m bit­ing my elbows, but it’s expen­sive to take sep­a­rate­ly. Even though it was fun 🙂

Ps If you have a child, but by age he is still far from such con­struc­tors, buy any­way, do not regret — start with Dup­lo, then switch to ordi­nary cubes. Assem­bling con­struc­tion sets, and then build­ing some­thing of your own from these cubes is excep­tion­al­ly good for fine motor skills and brain devel­op­ment of the child.

Where could I buy

You can buy this Osprey Boe­ing con­struc­tor on Aliex­press here

Impor­tant! The PF-set dif­fers no-PF in the pres­ence of a motor, bat­tery and remote con­trol.

Why does the title say “gift for the New Year”? So ahead of the sale on 11.11, it will just be pos­si­ble to order, save and receive in Decem­ber. I hope my tips on how to save on this sale will help you, click on the spoil­er below.