1/72 Italeri Agusta Bell AB 206 Jet Ranger

Gallery Article by Juergen Klinglhuber on July 15 2009

 

The "Team Shamrock" is the Austrian Airforce helicopter aerobatic and formation flight team. They are displaying their program at national and international Air Shows with 4 helicopters of the type Agusta Bell AB 206 Jet Ranger. These choppers wearing a kind of "special" paint scheme, as you can see on my model. It was in 1975, when this team presented a program for the very first time due to an anniversary. The show was a great success and therefore the “Shamrocks” soon had a regular occurrence on Air Shows all over Europe . Caused by various circumstances the team ended in smoke in 1987 and it took 10 years to bring together a new team. Today – same as all the active years before – the Shamrock team consist of pilot instructors from the 2nd helicopter echelon/air regiment N°1 which is located at the Brumowski/Langenlebarn airbase in Lower Austria . As a result of the instructors lack of time they decided, contrary to the professional and full time aerobatic teams, to visit only a maximum of five events per year.

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Building the Austrian Agusta Bell AB 206 Jet Ranger in 1/72 straight from the box is, as far as I am aware, not possible. But you can make a detour to get there. So if you look for an Italeri Kit N° 195 you will find an OH-58 Kiowa inside. This is a good basis to start with – unlike to the AB206, the OH58 have a higher landing skid and an uncovered tail rotor shaft.

So you either scratch-build to get to the correct appearance or you try to get some retrofit resin parts made by the IPMS Austrian branch. Every now and than they have a small amount of this conversion set available at their online shop. The Shamrock decals I also purchased the from the IPMS Austria shop.

Juergen Klinglhuber

Photos and text © by Juergen Klinglhuber