Avatar's AT-99 Scorpion

These helicopters drew my attention right away while watching Avatar. There was two types, the Scorpion and the Samson.   The Scorpion is shown below. The Samson has a V shaped rear stabilizer.

Fantastic Plastic really got into the movie and produced a number of kits based on the movie. I wanted the one Trudi flew for a vignette, but picked the wrong one. No matter the vignette will continue without Trudi.

At a recent meeting of the BPMS, one of the guys there said that he had this model and it was so difficult that it stopped him dead.  Having the same model, I was interested in seeing what was going on with this kit, so I took it out of the stash. 

 Upon opening it I saw immediately what he was talking about. What a mess! There is flash everywhere - not including the flash that keeps small parts together, which I think is good. But the other stuff. Every part id going to need attention.  Then there are these big blobs where the mold had previously been ripped away, so the next pour fills these voids with resin. One such piece is shown - 

Even the flat pieces have this odd wrinkled look to them - 

This was really disappointing. But having gotten in to garage kits in the mid 90's I am familiar with kits that were basically lumps of resin. Starting with the hull, which had that odd wrinkles what should be smooth parts  there was a lot of shaving, dremeling, and sanding to be done. Then some of the panel lines were incomplete, and bubbles in some of the smaller protuberances.  Additionally of of the boxy pieces that were molded on to the hull were very soft or misshapen. I cut them off and will replace them later on.   This caster, MMI, has some nerve giving these parts to FP as "professional" work. 

After four hours of work I had 4 parts together - 

More soon. Stay tuned.