Does anyone produce an Agusta 109?

[Wafu]

It would be nice to see the AW109 kitted in either 1/72,1/48 or both. I was working with Aviation Workshop, just before the demise, in supplying technical information on the 109 and 139 with a view to produce kits, unfortunately we all know how that turned out;)

 

The SAS 'inherited' two Agusta A109A's in 1982 and after evaluation tests found them to be ideal for their needs, much better than the Westland Scout. The MoD procured two more A109A's and added hard points and K-max ambulance sliding doors to do away with the standard gull wing doors, a customer modification from Agusta. After painting them in civil colours the four A109A's set about blending in to the civil fleet of commercial aviation in the UK.

 

Revell did produce a A109K2, a highbrid version developed for REGA in Switzerland, it had the airframe of a A109C but differed in having two Arrias engines to give extra performance over the standard fit of Allison C20C engines. Therefore the engine deck/exhaust area looks totally different. The Revell kit is a bit of a pig-in-a-poke, you can't model a A109A or A109A2 to back model it and you can't model a AW109E or S to bring it up to date. I say you can't, you can but be prepared to do a dockyard job in modelling it correctly. 

 

The AW109E and S aircraft standard fit is the Pratt and Whitney 206 engine, a great engine so much better than the now Rolls Royce Allison C20b and C engines. AW being AW did supply it with a French engine but not many customers took them up on it, only REGA and a few Middle Eastern customers went for it. 

 

I have seen seen a few 109's modelled in the past, I haven't yet seen a model completed that shows all the correct airframe and engine configurations in the right places, as always with modelling, pick a reference and stick to it.

[Giorgio N]

On 14/2/2017 at 1:03 AM, Sky dancer said:

Hi Giorgio,

 

Maybe you are already aware - ZE413 has been disposed off by the M.O.D. recently via Everett Aero, and is now with AST at Perth. It is still fitted with the medivac doors, but these have now been painted in blue/white/red to match the rest of the airframe.

 

The nose cone now appears to be a solid white version, rather than having the usual landing lights - most unusual!

 

Link:-

 

http://forums.airshows.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=75320

 

All the best.

 

 

 

Thanks for the additional info, always welcome !

 

In the meantime the postman delivered the Vetromodelli kit to my door, a first inspection revealed a small vacform style fibreglass sheet with 2 fuselage halves, vacformed clear parts (slightly yellowed unfortunately) and some useful instructions. I'll post pictures later

[Giorgio N]

Some pictures as promised. The kit is in a plain cardboard box

 

 

Only the stickers at the box edges tell what's inside

 

 

The violin in the company logo is because Vetromodelli was from Cremona, a city famous since ancient times for the production of these instruments (think Stradivari and Guarneri, all from the city).

The content can't really compare to the quality of the Violins...

 

 

The main parts are moulded from a fibreglass sheet:

 

There's a slight hint of warpage on the tail end of the right fuselage half, but nothing really to worry about. The surface detail on the fibreglass parts is actually not bad

 

 

Of course all the parts will have to be separated from the backing sheet, vacform style. Being fibreglass however the sheet is much more rigid and I believe that a saw will be better suited than a knife. All apertures will have to be open, will not be an easy job.

Clear parts are of course vacformed

 

 

Some have yellowed slightly, fortunately all parts are duplicated (one small sheet remained in the bag and is not in the picture).

 

This is not going to be an easy kit to build but we have to keep in mind that we're talking of a 30-something year old kit made in a garage by a couple of enthusiastic modellers. With this in mind I have to say that it's not a bad base. My plan is of course to use as many parts as possible from the Revell Rega kit, things like rotor blades and other details are not included in the Vetromodelli kit but are nicely reproduced by Revell.

 

[Dave Fleming]

Oh wow, you have your work cut out on that one!

 

There was a resin conversion set that was announced from a South American source, the parts shown looked good. Unfortunately, the supplier took a fair bit of money and disappeared - not sure if any were ever actually supplied.

 

http://www.helikitnews.com/issues/hkn198.htm

 

http://www.network54.com/Forum/163130/message/1108050282

 

Sky models did a conversion for an Italian Customs A109SE, which at least gave the correct engine, but still needed some work to make a UK issue

 

http://www.network54.com/Forum/163130/message/1086971021

[Giorgio N]

Dave, I had heard of the Sky models conversion but never saw one. Yesterday a fellow Italian modeller showed me some pictures and looks pretty good to me but I wonder how easy it would be to find. Mind, I thought this kit was impossible to find until I found one, and at a decent price for such a rarity (£17)

 

Another Italian modeller told me that the company is actually still in business ! And they still do models, although not kits...

 

http://digilander.libero.it/vetromodelli/About us.html

[Giorgio N]

And now I've also found that a fellow modeller on an Italian forum is one of the two modellers who started Vetromodelli ! I love how in a matter of a few days I managed to find a kit and learn more about the history behind this and the people who made this kit. Unfortunately the moulds are not available anymore, so these kits can only be found at swap meets, Ebay or specialised second hand kit shops. Not much of a problem for most of their subjects as these have been made available by others, but this A.109 is still the only ever made of this variant

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello

I built Revell kit for a review more than fifteen years ago and painted it in what I then thought was fictitious South Africa scheme. 100% OOB build and I did not even bother with a clear matt coat at the end. I took one photo and immediately recycled the kit by splashing a liberal amount of oven cleaner on the top of it. Reasons for such a haste are evident from this somewhat blurry photo:

The kit went together well, but its accuracy is questionable. As Wafu wrote in his post whichever version one decides to build kit needs corrections. Nevertheless Agusta A 109 is quite an eye-catching helicopter and with its widespread use there is no shortage of interesting colour schemes. I later bought another Revell kit, although I have not started with its build yet. Also, I would not mind if a nice mainstream kit of A 109 in 1/48 appears one day. Cheers

Jure

[Wafu]

Hi Giorgio,

By the looks of the pictures you posted, the vacform is of a A109A, the upper engine exhaust cowl being tapered shows this, the AII, has a squared rear top cowl. Both types had the Allison C20B engines fitted. The nose shows this as well, the AII had a proper cone and the A had a cover over the two forward facing landing lights. If you look at images on google for G-TGRA for an A model and G-TELY for a AII model. 

 

The nose on the vacform seems to be incorrect, to flat at the bottom. If you see the images you may see what I'm saying?

 

I look forward to a 1/48 A109 but can't see it coming from Italeri any time soon.

[Giorgio N]

On 17/2/2017 at 9:24 PM, Wafu said:

Hi Giorgio,

By the looks of the pictures you posted, the vacform is of a A109A, the upper engine exhaust cowl being tapered shows this, the AII, has a squared rear top cowl. Both types had the Allison C20B engines fitted. The nose shows this as well, the AII had a proper cone and the A had a cover over the two forward facing landing lights. If you look at images on google for G-TGRA for an A model and G-TELY for a AII model. 

 

The nose on the vacform seems to be incorrect, to flat at the bottom. If you see the images you may see what I'm saying?

 

I look forward to a 1/48 A109 but can't see it coming from Italeri any time soon.

 

Thanks for the info, I'll check the varioud differences between the two variants. It's taking me a while to finally understand the evolution of this helicopter, the A109 family is way larger than I thought with some serious differences.

The kit claims to be for the A109A, so no surprise here. I'll compare the bottom of the nose with pictures, until now I've only compared the dimensions with the Revell kit to verify the feasibility of using some of the fibreglass fuselage parts only instead of the whole airframe.

 

I believe you're right, there's almost no chance to see a 1/48 A109 from Italeri, while they have not neglected helicopters in their catalogue, it's very unlikely that they'll ever kit the 109. Unfortunately commercial helicopeters seem to have a very limited market in model form

[tempestfan]

Fascinating Giorgio, thanks for buying that kit in the name of science 😉

Am I right in that the "e" after modelli on the box is "and", so that it was not intended as a conversion proper? 

What donour kit did they intend the dynamic parts to come from?

One last question, as I am completely unfamiliar with the Revell kit : Didn't they design it modular to enable at least another significantly different version, as usually they only kit subjects facilitating this? 

[Giorgio N]

10 minutes ago, tempestfan said:

Fascinating Giorgio, thanks for buying that kit in the name of science 😉

Am I right in that the "e" after modelli on the box is "and", so that it was not intended as a conversion proper? 

What donour kit did they intend the dynamic parts to come from?

One last question, as I am completely unfamiliar with the Revell kit : Didn't they design it modular to enable at least another significantly different version, as usually they only kit subjects facilitating this? 

 

Yes, the "e" means "and", the whole line translates into "models and conversions", where in this case models should actually be kits rather than models, but in Italian language the equivalent of model is often used instead of the equivalent of kit.

The line is simply part of the Vetromodelli company logo, although I don't remember any conversion done by them but only complete kits. Complete up to a point... their kits were similar to most vacuforms of the day where all smaller parts and details were supposed to be scratchbuilt. The same is true for this kit: the very comprehensive instructions (of which I've not posted any picture but i can if there's interest) describe how to scratchbuild all the missing parts, with the size of the parts clearly indicated on the drawings.

The Revell kit seems to have been designed with some modularity in mind, however I'm not sure how easy it would be to change certain parts. In any case the Revell kit would only allow a fixed landing gear variant to be built, the others would require a lot of work

[Giorgio N]

9 hours ago, WhirlybirdModels said:

Hi guys. We have a 1/72 A109A kit about 50% completed. Not sure if it will be finished this year or next.

Cheers

Dave @ Whirlybird

 

This is fantastic news Dave ! Looking forward to this, please keep us informed !

[cvrle]

Excellent news... And if you could follow it up with the Kiwi LUH version?

 

Cheers!

[Giorgio N]

On 20/2/2017 at 7:15 PM, Giorgio N said:

 

Yes, the "e" means "and", the whole line translates into "models and conversions", where in this case models should actually be kits rather than models, but in Italian language the equivalent of model is often used instead of the equivalent of kit.

The line is simply part of the Vetromodelli company logo, although I don't remember any conversion done by them but only complete kits.

 

A correction to my previous post: while browising through some old magazines in search of a Phantom picture, I found reviews for some products of this company. They did issue a number of conversions, among them the SIAI S.1019 (to be used on the Airfix O-1 Bird Dog) and an Mc.205 fuselage to convert the Tauromodel Mc.202 (Tauro later issued the Mc.205)

Edited February 21, 2017 by Giorgio N

[Truro Model Builder]

The lack of kits of modern helicopters that are not gunships or naval aircraft is shocking. Revell is about the only firm that takes the subject seriously with the EC135 and EC145, though I am glad to see AZ Model have the R22 and R44 on their list.

 

[Dave Fleming]

1 hour ago, T7 Models said:

The lack of kits of modern helicopters that are not gunships or naval aircraft is shocking. Revell is about the only firm that takes the subject seriously with the EC135 and EC145, though I am glad to see AZ Model have the R22 and R44 on their list.

 

 

I have a list as long as my arm of helicopter subjects I wish someone would do in 1/72 - Squirrel (without wrestling the Mach 2 kit), Twin Squirrel, A109A, A109E, later Dauphin variants, decent Gazelle - most of which are not particulalry modern, but 'last 40 years'

[cvrle]

A modern tooling of the Gazelle is one of my dream kits....