USS Ronald Reagan, CVN-76, in 1:350 Scale

At this point I decided to arrange and glue all of the aircraft and equipment in place on the deck.

I decided to depict a large launch operation, using the two bow cats and one of the waste cats to launch F-35s, F/A-18s, and a Hawkeye.

I then spotted aircrraft around deck in position to be towed to their lunach positions when the time came.

Here's how that looked with numerous pictures:

I then added life buoys around the vessel, from the stern to the arious areas along the vessel where they might be located to toos to anyone who fell overboard, or whom the vessel may come to on its way...though if someone needed SAR, the helos and Opsreys could take care of that at any distance from the ship.

A couple of more of the carrier, the last with all of the aircraft spooted:


At this point it was time to add US Navy personnel on th lfight deck, along the catwalk all around the flight deck, on the stern, and on the island.

I had already added personnel inside the island, and in the hangar dek. I had a total of 17 inside the island, and 24 in the hangar.

Now it was time to add more. The distinctive colored shirts for armament, fuel, alectronics, and deck manuevering for the aircraft, and then numerous personnel in thei US Navy whites, working around the carrier..

I used Veteran Models 1/350 scale US Aircraft carrier personnel...and they were very reasonable for purchasing the pre-painted personnel, so I bought those. They are very tiny and they certainly hae the equipment to mass produce them in a very decen paint scheme which I would not have been able to duplicate.

Altogether on the flight deck, toutside the island, on the stern and arund the catwalk and various auxillary decks I added another 91 personnel. Which means I have 132 personnel around the carrier. This of course is a very small number as over 5,000 personnel man these carriers.

Here are a bunch of pictures showing the personnel:

At this point the ship was essentially completed. Much earlier than expected...but I gauged my work on doing the work only in the evenings after work. Now that I have retired, I found myself working on the carrier many more hours each day...probably three times as much each day...just couldn;t tera myself away.

Here are pictures of teh whole thing on the work table after adding the touch up and the dull coat paint:

Now it was time for the final layout pictures on our kitchen island, where I take the final pictures of most of my models:

Very, very nice indeed! ...and here are some close ups, along with looks into the hangar: