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!

[seadude]

 Remember, modelling is meant to be fun!

It is? Well, I didn't get that memo. Whoever is in charge around here of passing out memos and forgetting to give me one needs to be fired!

[seadude]

Painting of the grey color for the carrier flight deck has been done today. Supposedly, Vallejo spray can paints are both a primer and a paint. So when it comes time to do the masking of the flight deck lines, I'm hoping the grey will not pull up when I peel the masking tape off. As for the larger white/yellow flight deck lines, I haven't decided yet if they will be hand brushed, spray can painted, or painted using paint markers. I don't expect to do any flight deck lines until maybe late June.

[kerick]

That looks great!

[seadude]

In other news..........

Now that the flight deck has been painted, what's next?
I'll probably work on touching up painting the flight deck edge catwalks first as there's some areas that need to be repainted the ship hull grey color. After that, then I'll do touchups on the flight deck itself for missed spots.
Next will probably be painting the large flight deck white and yellow landing lines as shown back in Post # 515 on Page 35 of this thread. Some of those lines are a bit thin. I think trying to spray can or hand brush paint them might be too "extreme". Shown below, I went to a store and bought the following paint marker. I'm going to do some tests tonight and tomorrow on some scrap plastic and see how well it does. I think one of the nice things about paint markers, especially the ones I just bought, is that they have small/fine tips to allow you to paint/draw thin lines. The small package I bought had white and black colors. But I only need the white.
After painting the main white/yellow flight deck landing lines, then the next thing will probably be painting the 4 aircraft catapults. After those are done, then I need to paint some smaller details on the flight deck which I'll explain later. After that, then I think I might be able to move on to adding decals to the flight deck. And then after the decals, well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

[seadude]

Did some testing earlier on a scrap piece of plastic with the white Sharpie Creative paint marker. Painted a spare piece of sheet styrene with the same grey as what the flight deck was painted with. It may look black in the picture, but I assure you it is Panzer Grey.
The paint marker works pretty much just like a regular colored marker in that you just "draw" where you want paint to go for lines, letters, etc. There's no priming/pumping/shaking (like what other paint markers have) of the Sharpie Creative marker in order to get paint to the tip of the marker in order to start using it.
The best way to get the lines below is to start/stop exactly from end to end. Do not start/stop in the middle or anywhere else. Now the lines below are nice and straight only because I used TAMIYA masking tape to help create them.
BUT............the lines aren't perfectly white. I had to do at least 4 passes for each line with the paint marker to get the lines to look as they are in the pic below.
But if you look very closely at the thicker white line, you may be able to see that coverage of the white is still not perfect. You can barely, just barely, see the dark grey peeking through the white. So in order to get complete white coverage, I'd probably have to do a 5th or 6th pass with the marker. Even the thinner white line isn't perfectly white either.
The other nice thing about this paint marker is that the paint is a flat and not gloss. Something which I'm happy about as I needed flat for the flight deck. The other thing about these paint markers is that they dry pretty fast. Usually under 15 minutes.

[seadude]

Sneak peek for tonight.

I'm starting to mask and paint the long/larger flight deck landing lines with the Sharpie Creative paint marker that I previously mentioned.
At the stern area of the flight deck is a larger wide white line. This is common to all aircraft carriers if you take a look at pics of real US carriers. This larger wide white line required at least 6-7 passes with the marker to be 100% white with almost zero grey deck showing through. The paint when applied is really thin. So it takes multiple passes of the marker to get good enough coverage to prevent the grey deck from still being seen under the white paint. But you also have to realise: the larger the area being painted with the markers, the more passes it will probably take to give total even coverage. But when I move to doing the thinner flight deck lines elsewhere on the deck, I'm betting (and hoping) those lines will require fewer passes with the paint marker. We'll see.
As I draw (paint) the flight deck lines on the deck, I make one pass with the marker, then let the first coat dry for 30 mins, then do another pass with the marker, then wait for the second pass (coat) to dry for 30 mins, and so on and so on. I want to make sure each pass has a decent amount of time to dry before applying the next coat (pass) with the marker.
In the first pic below, those "raised lines/ridges" really do help out when painting the flight lines because they help to prevent paint bleeding/spillover on the flight deck. They act as "walls" of sorts.
Anyway, don't expect progress on the flight deck to be very fast. There's lots of masking to do and lots of "coats/passes" to do with the paint marker to create the lines. So I don't expect to be completely done with painting the flight deck lines until maybe the end of June...........or around July 4th at the latest. 

[Gondor]

That sounds and looks like you have found a solution to your line problem 

Gondor

[seadude]

That sounds and looks like you have found a solution to your line problem 

Gondor

I hope I have. Though it's not perfect. One nice thing about these paint markers is that they won't bleed through the TAMIYA tape. BUT............I have had a few spots where the white paint creeped under the "edge" of the tape. I noticed this when I pulled the tape off after doing a section of flight deck line. It's my own fault though as I probably didn't make sure the edges of the tape were down flat. But any spots where the white paint went under the edge of the tape were very minor. Almost like tiny pin points. A little tiny dab of panzer grey paint will cover those up nicely.
Once I get the white flight deck lines done, then I'll do the yellow portion of the flight deck lines. After that's done, then I'll be painting the 4 aircraft catapults, but with regular paint.

[seadude]

Ok, 1/3rd of the flight deck landing lines are done. It came out moderately well. Next to do will probably be the single center white/yellow line that goes right where the F-18 is. After that, then I have to do the lines to the right of the F-18 which are the same as the lines on the left side of the F-18.
Contrary to popular belief, a carrier's flight deck is not black. It may look like it in the below pics, but that's only due to lighting, angle, and/or camera settings. A carrier's flight deck is more like a dark grey color.
When all the white/yellow flight deck landing lines are done, then I'll probably move on to painting the aircraft catapults.
You'll notice there are some "gaps" where I didn't paint white for the flight deck landing lines. You never paint white over the aircraft catapults and/or over the jet blast deflectors. If you look at real pics of aircraft carrier decks, you'll see what I mean.

[NARSES2]

Looks good 

[seadude]

Tell me what you think, folks.
Finally finished up painting the catapults and the flight deck landing lines this morning.
I was very worried the paint markers wouldn't work very well or cause me other issues. But after careful masking and preparation, everything seemed to turn out ok. The lines aren't 100% perfect. You'd have to be very close or take a magnifying glass to see very slight discrepencies and errors in the lines. I'd say the white/yellow lines are more like 97-98% ok.
Anyway, not too bad considering I didn't airbrush, hand brush, or spray can paint the landing lines.
So what's next? I'm not sure.
Some flight deck decals need to be put on. Two aircraft elevators need to be added. Arresting wires need to be added, but may wait on those till after I've added more flight deck decals. Starboard side flight deck edge catwalks need to be repainted and detailed. And there's so much more to do.
EDIT: THE SECOND PIC BELOW SHOULD SAY 69.065 DARK STEEL. I ACCIDENTALLY MISTYPED THE NUMBER.

Note: If anybody ever plans to build a 1/350 scale aircraft carrier in the future, make sure you stock up on TAMIYA yellow masking take.   All different sizes, particuarly the 1, 2, 3, 6, and 10 mm sizes.

[Gondor]

You're the expert, but it looks good to me. 

Gondor