The USS Freedom LCS-1 (littoral combat ship), commissioned in 2008, is designed for operations in coastal (littoral) waters. With a V-shaped hull and sleek lines that make her look more like a millionaire’s yacht than a warship, the 3,000-ton ship can make better than 40 knots.
Cyber-hobby’s 1/350 scale USS Freedom comprises eight gray and three clear sprues plus the stand, upper and lower hulls, and a one-piece superstructure (wrapped separately in foam protection). Also, there is a photoetched-metal sheet with 113 parts; all railings and fittings are included.
The main downside to the kit is a bunch of extremely tiny parts. Cleaning the sprue stubs from some of the smaller parts was almost impossible. But there was no other cleanup required. A large and complete decal sheet is included.
The construction diagrams are typical of Cyber-hobby: packed full and hard to decipher. I assembled the hull and superstructure, then joined them before adding the vast number of detail parts. You’ll need to search the Internet for pictures to figure out all the options listed in the instructions. There is no indication of what is what, but, generally, it’s “2008 as built” or “as put into service 2010.”
There was a slight warp in my hull which required clamping to get a good join between the superstructure and lower hull. I added the hundreds of tiny parts to the ship but held off on the delicate photo-etched-metal railings and multiple whip antennas until the very end to avoid damaging these frail parts.
Magnifiers, fine tweezers, and steady hands are a necessity for building this kit! Some of the 1mm parts were all but impossible to work with, and, generally, there are no spare parts. You’ll have to use great care to avoid losing parts; I had to fabricate several replacements.
The four .50-caliber machine guns are over-scale and look more like 40mm singles.
Colors are keyed to Gunze Sangyo and Testors Model Master paints, but the instructions for them are wrong. The overall color of the Freedom is haze gray with black/dark gray anti-slip on the entire bow and flight decks. All other horizontal decks are deck gray. The lower hull is standard hull red with a black boot stripe (not all black as indicated). The 57mm gun turret warning circle should be centered on the mount, not slid forward as shown. The leading edge of the superstructure overlaps the stripe, and there should be a red stripe across the forward superstructure. Most pictures of the ship show a more typical red and white warning stripe instead of a solid red stripe. I used Polly Scale undercoat LT gray for haze gray, Tamiya dark sea gray (XF-54) for deck gray, and Polly Scale tarnished black for the anti-slip. The decals performed well.
The Freedom’s diesel engines apparently produce a lot of soot. To replicate that, I brush-painted the lower hull in a streaky pattern of dark sea gray, then lightly airbrushed undercoat LT gray over that, leaving the hull looking streaked and blotchy. Using very thin Polly Scale steam engine black, I misted on the soot stains. As weathered as my model is, it’s nowhere close to what the real ship looks like after a mission.
The MQ-8B fuselage parts have large ejector pins to remove before assembly. With fuselages molded in clear plastic, each of the MH-60S helicopters has at least 12 parts. They are well-detailed for their size.
The photoetched metal is soft and delicate; it bends with even the smallest movement and breaks easily. I had to replace several pieces to complete the ship, and spent more time fixing bent railings than I did installing them. A lot of the photo-etched-metal parts end with no stanchion or support, and all the chock openings in the bow railings have free-floating bars; damage is impossible to avoid.
Because of the multitude of small parts and the delicate photoetched metal, I would recommend this kit only to the experienced modeler. However, with nothing but what is provided in the box, the kit makes a stunning model.
Note: A version of this review appeared in the October 2012 FineScale Modeler.