COBI Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk Set 5817

COBI's Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a 1:32 model built from 905 blocks, 53.5 cm long, under licence from Sikorsky. The rotors turn, the doors slide, and a machine gun is mounted beside the cockpit. Two figures of American pilots are included, plus a brick printed with the set name and the Sikorsky logo.

These are built next door to the COBI factory

COBI mentions it almost in passing, and it deserves more than that.

Black Hawks are manufactured in Mielec, in south-eastern Poland. PZL Mielec has been owned by Sikorsky since 2007 and by Lockheed Martin since 2015, and the S-70i Black Hawk is built there and sold worldwide — the only Black Hawk production line outside the United States.

COBI's factory is in Mielec too. So a brick model of a Black Hawk, designed and moulded in Mielec, is a model of a helicopter assembled a short distance away in the same town. Poland buys them for its own special forces and police, and the town that makes the toy makes the aircraft.

It is a genuinely unusual coincidence in a licensing arrangement, and it is probably why the licence exists at all.

The aircraft

Two turboshaft engines, a crew of two pilots and a crew chief who also works the door gun, and room for eleven soldiers in full equipment. In service since the 1970s, continuously updated, and flown by more than twenty countries. It is the helicopter most people picture when they picture a military helicopter.

In the COBI range

Set 5906 is the Black Hawk at 1:32 with 928 pieces and one figure.

Specifications

Pieces: 905 · Figures: 2 pilots · Scale: 1:32 · Licensed by Sikorsky
Model length: 53.5 cm (21.1 in)