One step forward, one step back

I really like what I've seen from the folks at Cyber-Hobby over the last year. Until I picked up their F6F Hellcat at the IPMS Nats a few weeks ago, my experience with their kits had been virtual, having seen them only online. Their SB2C has been very well received by the modeling community despite the existence of the superb Academy kit, and their Meteor looks equally nice. I was eager to fondle another example of their work.

When Cyber-Hobby released their Sea Venom in 1/72 scale, I was intrigued. Cold War British aircraft are not of special interest to me, but there's something about that big, bulbous nose that intrigued me, that and I've always had an affinity for smallish aircraft and armor. When I saw photos of the Sea Venom on the various discussion boards and saw the finesse of the moldings, I knew I had to have one.

Last week I scored a Sea Venom on eBay for a good price and received it over the weekend. In terms of detail and molding, it's really, really nice, folks. The bad news is, it has its share of flaws. Danielle Lang was kind enough to do a thorough evaluation of the kits on Britmodeller.com and share her findings on this thread and this thread. She compiled quite a list of issues. Say what you will about "rivet counting," but I appreciate reviews like this because they make me a more informed consumer, and that's never a bad thing. I bought the kit, aware of those shortcomings, and having it now I can say I'm looking forward to building it.

Almost.

Why? The one glaring shortcoming of the kit is...drum roll please...the lack of an opening canopy! This is not 1971, right? This is not a Frog kit sitting before me, right? I find it surprising that anyone would produce a kit these days without an opening canopy. Maybe Cyber-Hobby wanted to hide the inaccurate instrument panel.

Let's hope this never happens again.