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