AS.532 Cougar, Sweden Army
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For the model I used an Italeri kit which is based on quite an old molds. The Sweden variant attracted me with its quite unusual painting scheme that combines dark green "military" overall color with bright red "rescue" details. Also, it has quite a set of options including front and side inflatable floats, a bottom radar, a hoist, and mesh intake filters. All in all, the prototype is quite attractive to build.
The helicopter kits of Italeri are mostly old, poorly detailed and engineered. They are challenging to assemble and paint, and Cougar is no exception. I failed to properly center the ceiling of the cargo cabin, and one of the sponsons is a bit misplaced. The fit was not terrible but still some places required puttying and sanding.
The model resembles the prototype but misses quite a lot of significant details, like nose and engine coulings antennas, a searchlight at the back, a bottom hook, all the interior parts, etc. I've added some antennas from leftovers, but I had no goal to scratchbuild everything. The same is true for the decals - they are mostly incorrect in size, but not bad from the quality standpoint.
To summarize, it was rather fun to build this model. I've got over the idea that it is too complicated to build something true-to-life from Italeri without having excellent scratch-building skills, so for a one month of work the model looks just fine, in my opinion.
