HobbyBoss 1/700 USS Cole

[Neptune]

Well since we're at it. Here is a small review of the 2nd kit I got for Christmas. The USS Cole. One of the best surprises for me as I hadn't asked for this kit, but always have had special attention to the Arleigh Burke class as it represents, in my eyes, one of the most efficient ship designs of this age. Packing so many missiles and with Batch IIA, even helicopters, into such a compact and good looking hull is quite a feat. Apparently, with recent extra orders the USN seems to agree.
The USS Cole however is "just" a simple Burke flight I, without any hangar or extra equipment, but armed with Harpoons instead.
Of course she also became famous for being attacked and nearly sunk in Yemen in a terrorist attack. She was afterwards transported on a semi-submersible ship (which of course asks for a diorama, although I'm sure it has been done a few times before, so I'll see what I do with it, kind of a shame to "destroy" my first Burke model).

Anyway enough talking, on to the review.
This time a lot more sprues than the HMS Astute model. To my greater surprise, it even had some PE inside.
Instructions at first sight look rather short, but haven't gone through them in detail yet.
A paint chart is again added, same style as the Astute's, with for each colors the corresponding number for Mr Hobby, Humbrol, Tamiya, Model Master and Vallejo paints.
This is what the box looks like when you open it.
The upper hull has been put on the lower hull section although there is a waterline option. These pieces are held together by the same flexible foam protection that is used to protect weaker parts (in the Astute box, the pumpjet was protected that way). In this kit the same protection is wound around the propellors as well. All sprues as well as some seperate parts are packing in their own plastic bag.


Sorry for the flash on this one, will take a new pic when I get home. This is the paint chart.


Forward part of the ship, as you can see the bulbous bow is added in seperate pieces. The sprue in front contains the propellors and hence you see the wound flexible foam protection.


And here is the aft part of the ship, with the parts of the bulb in the foreground.
As you can see there are some "attachments" on the aft part of the hull which will have to be removed carefully to not damage the adge of the hull near the helicopter deck.


And here is a top view of the hull with some pieces which were packed in seperate bags, bit of a waste if you ask me as these parts have some "attachments" that have to be removed as well.


A close-up of one of these pieces out of the bag. See the "attachment". The superstructure looks rather detailed, although I still have to check whether those details are correct.




The kit contains one transparent sprue with two Seahawk helicopters, one with open rotor, one with folded blades. I doubt the folded blades will be seen much on these ships as they don't have a hangar.


There's 2 B-sprues with each some parts for the stand as well as the Harpoons, RHIB etc.


The main deck came seperate in a bag and also the waterline plate is present.


Here is the aft helo deck with some other parts.


And here are the two sprues of PE. One with mainly the VLS hatches as well as the railings, the other with some mast details as well as the SPY-1 arrays.





I was kind of surprised to find a rather sharp PE set in a most regular kit at such a good price.
After a quick dry fit of the main deck to the hull it appeared to fit quite well, so it looks promising up till now. I'll try to make a WIP on this one as well if I find the time to build it. Haven't measured the correctness of certain things like the guys in the "Calling All Burke fans" topic, so I'm not entirely sure if the helicopter deck has the correct length (which has been found faulty in some other kits of this class).

[Bill Clarke]

Thanks for that, looks like a real little gem. I love that HB put PE in their kits, hopefully this will catch on with other manufactureers.

[Rick_H]

I just finished one of these kits. Was quite surprised by some of the big attachment points that needed to be removed. I thought the PE set was very, very nice. At the moment, I thought there were too many fiddly small bits, but I am now working on a Dragon USS Virginia which is covered with small fiddly bits. The DDG's mast in particular had many small plastic and PE bits.

Normally, I stick fairly close to the building sequence described in the instructions, but this one seemed to lend itself nicely to logical freelancing. HAH. There are a few parts that go all the way across the superstructure and then are trapped in the center by other pieces. I needed to backtrack some.

My first Hobby Boss kit, and a change from other 1/700 kits I have built. I liked it, in general.

[Neptune]

Thanks for the advice Rick.

Those big attachments, I have a theory about it. I guess these parts are mostly common to all Burkes. So I assume they make them in sprues with 1000 pieces of lower superstructure (by that of course they also have to make a seperate upper superstructure as the SPY radars aft are placed higher on flight IIAs). Then they clip them off in the factory to pack them in a seperate plastic bag. The sheet with Harpoon launchers etc is probably the "dedicated" sheet for flight I, II, IIA etc.
Probably comes out cheaper than making seperate Flight I, II, IIA sprues.

One more question, did you check for the accuracy of the details molded on the bulkheads? If so, how accurate are they? I've seen quite a lot of people sanding off all molded details on a lot of kits, to replace them by their own, more accurate ones...