The Italeri O-2 kit is based on the 1966 Hawk Cessna Super Skymaster kit #565. The raised rivets, detail and fit of the kit is very apparent 1960's vintage. The kit was resold as a Cessna O-2A Skymaster by Testors in 1991 with added glass (on some versions), antennas, hard points and weapons as well as the O-2B spinners. They also included the PsyOps speaker for mounting on the right side of the fuselage, however the meager interior is still the old civilian version. The Italeri re-box is essentially the same kit. Either way, there is a lot of scratch building and work to be done to make this kit decent... I did not put in that much effort.
The front canopy needed lots of cleaning up and dry fitting, the overhead windows are worse, tail booms are difficult to properly align and cement in, main gear is weak and tires are barely passable. I have probably missed some PitA areas as at some point I just moved along painting my O-2 Aircraft Gray FS16473 and white, gloss, decals on, semi-gloss and called this one finished.
This kit was the only choice for a O-2 in this scale... but wait, we have some late breaking news here... I have it on good authority that ICM is releasing an updated O-2 Skymaster kit which will render this old kit obsolete (and force me to build another one of these aircraft to eclipse this example).
Oh and by the way while I was checking out that announcement of the O-2 I noted that an OV-10 Bronco was also on ICM's future release list - Yeah! more good news :) If you have seen the Testors 1/48th Bronco, you'll know why I am celebrating this news ;)