ESCI – 9005 – AB-205 Transport

Description:

AB-205 Transport

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a U.S. Utility helicopter Bell UH-1 Iroquois, the designation AB-205 was the company internal designation (Augusta-Bell) for the military designations UH-1D and UH-1H.

This kit and variant, was the first ESCI release of the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, which included later up to three kits (variants) and a couple of inclusions in combo or playset boxes. The three kits were released and tooled the same year, 1981, and kit features a good tool with some minor inaccuracies, being a good kit even for today standards. The main controversial for the kit, and you can see this discussion about the kit in several hobbyists forums, is that the cargo area doors have windows of different sizes, a feature that later was changed by equal size windows in the real model but is proved that this versions existed, though several of the decals issued with the ESCI moulds are not correct for such variant. This small problems with the doors, reduces the options of the kit, as for sure the not equal windows is not the most extended variant of the UH-1D, and understanding that change to equal size was a later improvement, the ESCI kit can be assimilated to an early production UH-1D, without export sales and mainly only usable for Vietnam, where often the doors were just removed.

Originally this kit included a decal sheet with three export markings, for Italy, Germany and Spain, but there is no evidence of such different size windows in any of the samples issued to these countries.

The variant ESCI – 9006 – AB-205 Ambulance changed decal sheet and small sprue with the interior stretchers, while ESCI – 9009 – UH-1D “Huey Hog” added a new small sprue with the weapons and mount points keeping the interior of this transport version, and this later release is what Italeri reissued as Italeri – 1247 – UH-1D SLICK. The transport variant was also included in ESCI – 9046 – UH1 First ACAV with soldiers