QMan Combat Zones Armored Helicopter Windstorm Set 1801

Qman's Armored Helicopter Windstorm is an 8-in-1 Combat Zones set built from 381 blocks, with enough parts for eight small vehicles or one large armoured helicopter. Age 6+.

Look at what the eight models are

A police car, a fast pursuit vehicle, a helicopter, a twin-hulled patrol boat, a cruiser, an air-cushion landing craft, a fighter and an inshore patrol boat.

That is not a police force. That is a coast guard, and the mix is accurate.

A coast guard is the strangest organisation in any government, because it is simultaneously a police force, a rescue service, a customs authority and a navy. The same crew that stops a smuggler on Tuesday is winching a fisherman off a sinking boat on Wednesday and inspecting a cargo manifest on Thursday.

That is why the fleet looks like this. Fast inshore boats for interception in shallow water, a hovercraft for beaches and mudflats where nothing else floats or drives, helicopters for reach and for rescue, and something larger for staying out in weather. No single vessel does more than one of those jobs well.

The United States Coast Guard sits under a different department from the other armed services in peacetime and transfers to the navy in war — which is a fair summary of the problem of classifying it at all.

Eight sub-models

Each of the eight is 45 to 49 pieces, so each is a short build of ten or fifteen minutes. That suits the age this is aimed at better than one long project: eight completions rather than one, and a child can stop after any of them having finished something.

Specifications

Pieces: 381 · Eight sub-models of 45–49 pieces, or one large helicopter · Series: Qman Combat Zones · Age: 6+