by Lester Hunt
1/500 USS John C. Stennis CVN-74 (Trumpeter)
The kit is the Trumpeter 1/500 scale with lots of scratch build to make it 10 times the model it was out of the box.
The air wing is CWV-9 with the squadron patches on the base board along with the ships seal and the Operation Enduring Fredom patch. All the decals were custom made and done on an ink jet printer. The decals are all of the sqaudrons that were on the boat.
All the aircraft came from three Revell 1/542 Saratoga kits since the ones in the Trumpeter kit were totally worthless. If you look closely you will see that the intakes and exhaust have been drilled out for detail looks. The landing gear on the planes was all scratch built. The COD is scratch built along with the Tilley, tugs, and fork lifts. There is a lot of added detail to the island and the scratch built radar tower. Some is not to scale, but this is my first ship model I have ever built. I tried to capture as much detal as I could to replicate the Stennis in the years 2000-2001. Only so much you can do with such a poorly manufactured kit though LOL.
The ship itself had all the walkways removed and scratch built with home made hose reels, I should have found some good PE ones though. The elevators are made from scratch to look more authentic to the real ones. The fantail has the added detail of the center line alignment lights lots, the boarding platform, and lots of added features and PE. The PE set that I used was from GMM for the Saratoga kit. The JBD's were scratch built from extra PE for detail. All the starboard side antennas were add ons along with the custom Fresnel Landing Light System. All the deck netting is made from scratch, but the life raft containers came from the Saratoga kits becuse the Trumpeter kit was short on them. Plus as everything else in the Trumpeter kit WAY OUT OF SCALE. Also from the Saratoga kit was the on board defensive armament with 4 CIWS (Phalanx) and 3 MK-29 (Seasparrow) Launchers.
Again some might look out of scale, but from your first review of this kit you can see that with some work it can make a great looking display model.
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