Italeri 1/72nd Merlin HMA 1
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History
  Jointly
developed/built by Agusta and Westland, the EH.101 is undoubtedly today's
most advanced medium helicopter. Powered by three General Electric CT7-6
or Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 turbines (each fueled by its own self-sealing
tank), it features a main 5-blade rotor made of composite material that,
thanks to a special anti-vibration system, ensures extremely silent running.
Five nations (United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Denmark and Portugal) have
chosen the EH.101 Collaboration with Lockheed-Martin has also led to the
founding of team US101, which aims to enter this machine in the tender
for the new US Presidential helicopter Marine 1. So it says straight from
the Italeri instruction sheet. The last of the 44 Royal Navy HMA1 Merlins
were completed in November 2002.
The Kit
  This
is a pretty kit in the box. Molded in light gray with both engraved and
raised detail, the kit looks complete in every way, until you start looking
closer. The exterior finish for the fuselage is clean, no sink holes or
flash and the delicate raised rivet detail is excellent. Unfortunately,
the door (part 40a) has a sink line around the porthole. This will have
to be filled in.
The interior looks complete with a detailed ASW station in the main
cabin and a nice looking cockpit. Once again, the details are well done,
but there are a large number of ejector pin markings   inside
the well executed detail. This is going to be hard to sand out without
destroying some of the nicely molded detail. Better engineering would
have placed most of these ejector marks on the side that would not be
visible after construction. Of all the details that Italeri molded into
this kit, they left out an important piece of equipment in the cockpit,
foot pedals! Never fear, Eduard makes a very nice detail set for this
kit and foot pedals are included (www.GreatModels.com for $19.95).
Building this kit should be a breeze. The instructions are quite lengthy
but everything is there in detail. Nothing looks ambiguous in the placement
of all (by my count) 120 parts. It can be built in either the standard
ready-to-fly position or in the stowed position, with folded blades and
tail. Four torpedoes and its dispenser are available as options if you
want to build it in its primary capacity as a submarine hunter.
The canopy is crystal clear and comes in its own protective packaging.
I see no problems in the fit or the molding. This is one of the areas
that Italeri excels above many other model manufacturers.
  The
decal sheet is in nearly perfect register but provides only one option
shown at the Belgian Helidays in 2003 (see https://www.b-domke.de/AviationImages/EH101.html).
A rather boring example but a scheme in common use in the Royal Navy.
I would prefer more options, especially the tiger stripe scheme (Revell)
or an Italian Navy Scheme to add variety.
In February 2005, a version of the Merlin, the US101, was chosen as
the replacement helicopter for the US Marine One presidential transport
fleet requirement (officially VH-71). So hopefully we will see a presidential
version sometime in the future.
Conclusion
With all its faults, this model should build into an accurate depiction
of the Royal Navy's Merlin HMA.1. Revell sells the same version of this
helicopter with a few extra bells and whistles for a few dollars more
(is $10 to $15 within the range of "a few"?) but they seem to
have based their example on the Italeri molds. For the money and the detail,
Italeri's Merlin is another great buy.
My thanks go to Testors and Internet
Modeler for this review sample.
References
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