1/72 Agusta Bell AB204B – Ciao Bell’a

Gallery Article by Juergen Klinglhuber on Mar 10 2010

 

This is my Agusta Bell 204B helicopter with the special paint scheme due to retirement of the AB204 choppers from the service at Austrian Air Forces. Austria was flying these birds since 1963 and finally in 2001 they were discharged. The last flight took place with the “Ciao Bell’a” paint-scheme, a nice wordplay for saying goodbye to this beautiful Bell helicopters built under Italian licence from Agusta Company.  

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At the time I decided to go for a AB204B in that special colours the kit that would fit best for this scope was Italeri box #1201. I guess it was around the years 2004/2005 (can’t remember exactly) and unfortunately the kit was more or less sold out at the shops. So I decided to convert Italeri’s UH1-F Kit Nr. 1229, which means doing work mainly around the air intake and turbine cowling which totally looks different to AB204. At least the exhaust nozzle was in the correct position (right hand).  Further the tail boom had to be shortened and fit to cabin and the kit did not consist of a rescue hoist (finally some plastic sheet, filler and wire). I used Eduard PE parts but once again I was impatient and sloppy during a build and so I used the original parts from the kit as cable cutters – now every time I have a look at the chopper I’m unhappy with the far too thick blades of the wire protection system. The decals are from the shop IMPS Austria branch.

Side note: I hardly started putting together my helicopter as Italeri re-issued the 1201 kit in 2006. But …Hey! As now I have collected everything I need for that conversion I was strong-willed to finalize this chopper my way. And here it is:  

I hope you like approach of this bird in it’s special Austrian colours, …

Greetings

Juergen Klinglhuber

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Photos and text © by Juergen Klinglhuber