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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images below to see larger images
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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images below to see larger images
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