I wanted to build a Swedish HKP 4. It was operated by the Swedish Air Force from the 1960s, primarily for anti-submarine warfare and search and rescue over the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. 04451 was the first HKP 4 delivered to the Swedish Air Force, in 1963. After serving with both the Air Force and Navy it made its last flight to the Air Force Museum in Linköping on 23 January 1992. It spent sixteen years in storage before being transferred to Flygmuseet F 21 in Luleå in 2008, where it remains the sole surviving example of the Air Force HKP 4A variant.

This was a really fun build. Finding the kit itself was not straightforward though — it took some searching on eBay before I tracked one down. I also thought I would need to combine two Academy kits to build the Swedish version, as only the Japanese variant had the sponsons required, and I believed I would need a different tail section as well. It turned out, however, that Sweden did operate some examples with the same tail section as the Japanese version.

I complemented the kit with Eduard's Big Ed detail set and Moose Republic Decals' sheet for Swedish versions. The Eduard set really elevated the level of detail, though I also had to scratch-build a number of details myself, such as the exterior rear-view mirrors, the cargo nets, the interior wall padding, and the radar on the underside.