AT-99 Scorpion Gunship

A poor pour for the resin. 4-5 hours of work to fill and sand pin holes over rear fuselage. Rescribing of panel lines extremely difficult due to the number of pinhole repairs 

Weight required in the nose to stop it falling on it's tail (lead shot added under control panel). Waiting to see if once the rotors are fitted it will continue to be tail heavy. Alignment holes when fitting undercarriage slightly out.  

Test fit of rotors. Actual rotors require heating (hot water) to straighten. Test fit to ensure that the fitting of the rotors works in the frame and the don't protrude too far outside. Very large pour seams on rotor housing that requires work. Cockpit panel fitted (instructions not real precise on where it fits) 

Be prepared to use a lot of Putty during the construction. Will be drilling out the exhausts to give them some depth 

Cockpit control panel fitted and filled. Front gun mount fitted and filled. Mounting points for the wing cutters are guesstimations. Easiest way is to measure from a known point on each wing to get them even. 

Has a slight lean to right hand side. Have tried to correct a number of times.
 

Test fit of wings with weapons pylons for rocket pods. Lining them up and trying to straighten allowed me to learn some new words. 

Top view with wings.
Will be drilling out the exhausts. No depth to them here as can be seen 

Rebuilt side nacelle to bring wings to an even keel. Was a drop of about 1cm difference from one side to the other 

Test fit of wings with rocket pods. Lining up the rocket pods to get them even was a test of patience. 

 

Test fit with front .50 cal guns and rotary cannon. Starting to look reasonable now. 

Front view. Will look at attempting to drill out gun and cannon barrels. This could get interesting. Hellfire missile pods still to be fitted. Will not be using kit ones as they have been miscast. Purchased Italeri 1:72 AH-1W for it Hellfire missile pylons and missiles to use (they have much better detail and shaping as well) 

Fitted canopy to fuselage. Using a vacform canopy for the first time was an entertaining experience. Fitted relatively well. Have some filling and sanding still to go. Canopy to still be masked prior to paint. Have test fitted rotors and missile pylon wings. Hellfire missiles in progress. 

Front view.  

Right side view. The pilots console has no decals or markings as part of the kit. Used some from other kits to make it look more futuristic. (although very difficult to see them) 

Fitting of the missile pods was very interesting. All the stub wings have is flat square mounting points which are not angled to take into effect the way the missile pods hang. A fair amount of putty was used to get the vertical hang required and then fitting to look relatively tidy. Sanding back those points was again difficult. Painting 200 yellow missile noses was fun... a  

Finally finished with this one. Decals were extremely thin (instructions also indicate that). Took 15 minutes in warm water to release. Drilled out the exhaust ports as the originals did not have the depth to look right. Painting the 200 dots on the missile pod tips was an entertaining experience. 

 

The kit definitely needs the weight in the nose to keep it from tail sitting