THE ELM CITY HOBBIES SPRUE VIEW

Posted Aug 04, 2010

This Trimaran packs a punch!

This is the newly released kit of the 1/700 LCS-2 USS Independence, by Cyber-Hobby, and represents the first ship in the Independence class Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The ship is intended to be a small assault transport, but can also take on various missions with the addition of purpose built mission modules. The ship was commissioned in mid January of 2010.

This is about as new as any kit can be. The ship was commissioned earlier this year, and here we have it in kit form. The kits comes in the familiar grey plastic we see on all Dragon and Cyber-Hobby kits, and the kit consists of over 70 parts, including an even dozen photo-etch parts, as well as a very neat 4 1/2 page instruction booklet.

Here are photos of the sprues and instruction sheets. The gallery will open in a popup and you can click through to the next and read descriptions.

The hull measures a whopping 18.5cm (about 7 1/2” for my metrically challenged friends), which according to the details on the Independence, actually scales out to about 3mm too long for the kit. Are we going to notice this? Probably not, but it should be noted. Out of the 70+ parts, there is one sprue in the kit (Sprue D) that is a generic sprue that Dragon/Cyber Hobby put in all their modern ships (same sprue is in Cyber-Hobby kit# 7098 CGN-38 USS Virginia), and unfortunately, there are exactly 6 parts from that sprue that are actually used with the Independence, all having to do with the SH-60 Helo.

That being said, the kit’s upper and lower hulls do fit well together, and I expect the rest of the parts will fit together just as well. This isn’t a large ship, and won’t take up much space on your shelf. Cyber-Hobby also gives you the option of doing a full hull, or a waterline ship (the latter I will personally use). I would have liked to have seen then include markings for the 2nd ship in the Independence Class, LCS-4 USS Coronado, who’s keel was laid in December of 2009.

All in all, this is a pretty nice ship kit. I would expect experienced and novice modelers alike would have no problem with this kit. I might caution beginners on this kit because of the many small pieces involved with this kit, and it being only 1/700, however with careful attention to the instructions, and taking your time, it should be no problem in the end. Painting shouldn’t be much of a problem, as it is pretty much grey, grey, grey……oh and grey!

A great addition to your modern ship collection.

If you have any questions or comments about this kit, you can post them here:

http://www.scalemodeladdict.com/forum/index.php/topic,1155.0.html

This kit retails for $36.50CDN and can be ordered from Elm City Hobbies

I would give it 3.8 out of 5 Sprues!

Scott Millican lives in Elm City, New Brunswick.
No one is exactly sure where that is.
He owns an awesome hobby shop
and has a really cool website too.