1/72 Italeri A-129 Mangusta 

by Erik Wauters

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   Italy National Day 2006 

 

Hello friends, I do have some expensive kits in my stash, but when it comes to building I always build the cheapest kits first and in this occasion it is the much overlooked Italeri Mangusta kit. You get a great kit for next to nothing, I think I paid less than 4 euro for it. Yes you will need putty and sanding to get the best out of it, like most kits from Italeri. But at least they produce a nice range of heli's that other manufacturers wouldn't even think of.

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In all honesty, I can't really say which heli is uglier than the other, the Mangusta or the AH-64D, but it probably helps to scare the enemy and make him run for his money ;-)  They both have the looks of some nasty insect that tries to suck your blood on a sunny summer evening. With that in mind I tried to give this model a realistic look. To overcome the monotone paintscheme I used the complete arsenal of pre- & postshading with airbrush, enamel washes along the rivets on a dull surface, toning down the decals with a thinned mix (called a filter in armor modeling) of the original color, and the final oil washes on a glossy surface. My opinion on preshading is that you can keep it realistic as long as it's not the dominant factor in your finish. Or in other words, it's ok as long as you don't need sunglasses to look at your model ;-)

For an out of box I think this kit looks great. And it's a nice alternative for the omnipresent Cobra's and Apaches. Ok it's Italian, but don't they make great cars ?

CaptainErik

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Photos and text © by Erik Wauters