1/350 scale CVN-90 USS United States Stealth Aircraft Carrier

[seadude]

It gets worse. 

Earlier this afternoon, I tried putting on the US national insignia roundels for the Orange Hobby F-35's and the X-47's. Do you think they'd stay down? Nope. I tried about half a dozen times to put roundels on aircraft. Every single time I laid the decal on the aircraft surface, it either shriveled up and/or broke apart.    And the decal sheets were protected for the longest time in small ziplock bags prior to being used. And what makes things even more worse is that these are low visibility light grey roundel decals. This is the only color that will work on my F-35's and X-47's because my aircraft are painted a dark grey color. So I need light grey decals. I searched through all my spare decals at home and have no alternatives. Not sure where I'm going to get 1/350 scale light grey US national insignia roundels from.

As far as the other aircraft go like F-18's, V-22's, E-2C's, SH-60's, I hopefully should have enough roundel decals for those. Most aircraft are painted in a lighter color scheme which means the roundels they need will be slightly darker.

[seadude]

There are some times where I feel like I should just give up on this project. This is one of those times. 

I did a test with putting just the US national insignia roundels on two F-18's and nothing else. To say it looks like crap is an understatement.
I wished the roundels were "slightly" bigger, but what you see on the aircraft below is all I've got to work with.
There is a website that makes aftermarket airwing decals here:
https://davidsscalemodels.com/decals/1-350-air-wing-decals/?srsltid=AfmBOoq4ZB4quZMZGzIVXKR7dZO8VSNB3MwuvTdp6X4rvjwQHOMKsK8q
.............but at anywhere from $25-75+ per sheet, that can get to be quite expensive.
As I said before:

I'm not planning to put a bunch of squadron markings, numbers, etc. on the aircraft. It's just too time consuming, the decals are too small for my eyesight, and since my carrier is a future ship 20-30+ years from now, it's hard to say what squadrons would still be active or discontinued from service. So the only major decals that will be put on will be the U.S. roundel on the wings and/or sides of all the aircraft. I suppose that will probably make the aircraft look "cheap, plain, and boring", but that's what I'm going to have for my carrier. And buying sheet after sheet of aftermarket decal squadron markings really adds up. That's money I don't have right now.

So if I only put the national insignia roundel on all the aircraft and nothing else, that REALLY will make my aircraft (and the whole model ship display) look cheap, plain, and boring. So........what else can I do? What alternatives are there? Taking a carrier model to a contest with an empty flight deck is going to look pretty damn pathetic.
Though I have seem some people do it. The second picture below is from the IPMS Nationals that I went to last year. Somebody built a Gerald Ford carrier, but only added about half a dozen aircraft. I suppose I could do something similar, but it's still going to look pathetic.

The other option is the last picture below that I mentioned and showed previously on a past thread page. But this time, I could build and display the carrier, but leave the flight deck empty. And only put a small display of 9 or so aircraft in front of the carrier to give the impression of what types of aircraft the carrier could carry.

I'm stuck.
Not putting on a lot of decals on all the aircraft makes them look cheap, plain, and boring.
Not putting a lot of aircraft on the flight deck or only a few makes the carrier look cheap, plain, and boring.
What other options are there?

[Old Wombat]

I can only suggest that you go slightly crazy & blind getting one to three of each type painted & marked up appropriately & spot them on the deck for greatest impact.

Say one each of the E-2C & CMV-22B, two each of the MH-60 & MQ-25, & three each of the others.

Squadrons don't matter, it's a what-if, use your favourite squadrons, because, guess what, no-one else is going to know what squadrons are going to be in service in 20-30 years, either!


Just try to stop stressing out about it! Remember, modelling is meant to be fun!