Correcting Ronnie's & Georgie's islands

The real deal.
Italeri produced a whole new sprue of parts to issue kits of Reagan and Bush. Apparently there are differences between the two ships but during the months of work documented here I never saw them.
This (and similar photos) is what I used to base my measurements off. We know the island is too short and too tall, but we don't know by how much, or by how much in 1/720. What we do know however, is the length of the main support sponson under the island and flight deck on the 1/720 models. This is the same for all ships in the class, even if the size and position of openings is different. So printing this image and ensuring the length of the sponson is the same as the kit part, we can deduce roughly how long the island is supposed to be. (remember, not accurate, just less INaccurate). 

Compare unmodified (but still superbly built) model island to the previous photo. (google image- apologies to the builder, no info to credit image). It's obvious it's too short in length, what's not so obvious is it's also too tall in height. The USN deleted one deck from the ship compared to the earlier Nimitz class, but kept the overall height the same to provide more headroom per deck. There are still 3 decks with windows (Pri-fly, main bridge and flag bridge) so the removal of height should come from the main island halves (parts 29D and 30D).
While Italeri got this part soooo wrong, they also got it right! Let me explain... All the details are there and in the right place.

Did you ever try to resize a photo on your pc only to stretch it instead? Or squash it in one dimension rather than maintaining original ratio? It looks here that Italeri got all the info correct, but then someone squashed the drawing lengthwise to make the overall length the same as the Nimitz class island still in the kit. They also then increased the overall height to compound the error. So to be truly accurate, extending the island is not enough, we need to "stretch" it and have all the associated details to stretch with it, into the correct positions. Of course this is not possible, but where we can we will reposition to a more closer approximation of the real thing.
 

And compare to corrected 

29D & 30D unmodified. If my memory is correct the overall island length at flight deck level should be about 44/45mm. These parts are approx 33/34mm so 11mm needs to be added. I was fortunate to have 3 Reagan kits and 1 Bush, one of the Reagan kits was earmarked to be a Carl Vinson, so I had one full sprue of spare parts to hack, for the others I used plastic strip and sheet. 

Roughly 2.5mm needs to be removed from the height of 29 & 30, (see the upper impression of the remains of the hatch doors on the left). Personally, I removed this from the bottom of part 30 to keep the overhang deck part, and the top of part 29 to keep the moulded on detail closer to the right height. Also see here the 11mm length added on in plastic card to the left, and from the spare island to the right. I also removed the TV camera station from part 29 before reducing the height, and the triangular support on part 30, to be added again later in the "stretched" positions. 

Visual explaination. In general I found it easier to work the plastic card rather than the spare kit parts, but they did have moulded on detail. The "kink" on the port side here (part 29) will now be too far forward for accuracy, the only way to correct this is to rebuild the whole port side of the island from scratch, including the upper decks. I decided it was fine for my eyes.
 

Up one deck. Again, 11mm needs to be added, here cut from the spare parts 31D & 32D to be added on to the same parts for the final island. Note again I removed the ECM platform from part 31 to be added on again later in the more correct area. In addition, the walkway back to this platform also needs to be lengthened to match. 

31 & 32 as per cut and original. Flag bridge. 

These cut off parts to be added, that 11mm again! 

original island as per Italeri. 

modified island with the extension added and height reduced. Already starting to look better. 

And from the side. The extension to parts 31 and 32 needs to be sanded down a bit to fit. 

next level up, 33D and 90D are next. Main bridge. We can't just add on the end here as the platforms for the comms domes on 33D here need to be maintained. So cut them off to insert the 11mm extension. 

Unmodified. 

11mm added with plastic styrene sheet. Cut-off platform re-positioned.  

And side walls of walkway areas (vulture's row) added from strip styrene. Again the "kink" should be further back, but life's too short..... 

Top level (Pri-fly) parts 21D and 93D. Like previous deck the tail end needs to be removed and the extension inserted. Note here however that the overall length of this deck should be about 42mm for part 21D and 36/37mm for 90D 

why do one at a time when you can do 3 together? My plan was a model of Reagan full hull, no aircraft, and two waterline models of Reagan and Bush with hangars and flight operations ongoing. 

There is a small issue with all of the lower halves of each of the 3 upper decks. Italeri has moulded each with a solid plastic area as if there is a wall around the walkway that goes around the bridge windows. in reality there is a walkway but on the real ships a light railing should be there. I used a square section file to remove this but leave a "deck" for the walkway. looking back it might have been easier to remove it all and add plastic strip later. Never know now... 

Hopefully this photo explains what I'm trying to achieve (and explain) 

unmodified, the captain can't look down on the flight deck. 

modified, now he/she can. 

left modified, right unmodified. The "wall" should drop vertically from the bottom edge of the windows, not 2m in front. 

left unmodified, right modified. The "wall" should drop vertically from the bottom edge of the windows, not 2m in front. 

as opposed to these "blocks" 

hopefully you can see the improvement on the next photos compared to this. 

ho hum... file, file, file... 

Left corrected, right original.  

much better 

Yes, captain, you can see me now. 

Lets look at Reagan corrected bridge parts in comparison to Nimitz parts, that Italeri got correct back in the '70s. 

Unmodified at left, corrected at right. 

Lucy finally thinks I've lost it.... "Roy, are you sure you're OK?" 

back to the other stuff. 33D main bridge lower half (no windows). I broke off one of the platforms from the offcut on 33D so cut the others off for safe keeping. Filled the join on the main extension. 

Strip and stock added to 33D and 90D. Offcut of 21D (the "flag bags") added to approximate correct location (eyeballed from resized photos) to calculate the extension required for parts 21D and 93D (Pri-fly). 

Can't remember this exactly. I think it still was about 11mm. 

21d 

21D with insert added. 

corrected at left, original at right. 

93D was fun. Pri fly upper half. We need to "stretch" everything. We can't, so multiple cuts and repositioning of details are again required, not the least of which is the location of the mainmast. 

Now it's all glued together, how are we going to fill all those gaps in the decking. On the real ship it looks like a large smooth steel plate where the number goes. 

Well, I cheated. Thinnest plastic sheet I had. glued on, easy to cut to size after! 

On one of the others I tried just using stock plastic for the extensions to prifly (93D). 

looks more like it now. 

Again here the kink is too far forward, I don't worry about it. 

Don't forget to open the area at the rear. This allows the bombs to be armed out of the weather and transported out to the deck. 

Mast positioning. Again, eyeballed from photos resized on my computer screen (yes, I held a steel rule to the screen!) With no plans to work from, I printed photos of the real islands that were resized to the (now modified) correct 1/720 dimensions, so then just measured from them. Try to use photos taken 90deg "side-on" and from a distance, to reduce the error from perspective. 

other side. 

How does it look so far? 

Port side. Now, from here the modified (corrected) height becomes apparent as much as the length, when compared to photos of the real ships. 

production line approach.... 

and an original Nimitz for comparison. As I said at the start, someone in Italeri thinks all the islands are the same length on all the 10 ships. 

So everything needs to move back ("stretching") and the further back you go the bigger the move! The first hole at 7.5/8mm is for the forward dome part 39D. Leave it as is. Move the location for the radar (53D) back about 3mm (10mm from front bulkhead on part 93D as shown). 

The triangular platform for the two whip antennas should be about 16mm from the bulkhead, as shown. This was fun trying to attach with such a small surface area. Like the real ships, two small braces vertically underneath would help with support 

finally, location for the mainmast and the ECM platform. About 26.5mm from the front bulkhead on part 93D for the mast location. Again, these dimensions are eyeballed and I make no claims to accuracy. It just looks more right than what came in the box. 

overview 

overview part2. The rest of the island can be assembled as per the kit instructions. Just remember to glue back on all the bits you cut (or broke) off! 

lastly the mast is also too tall. This shows approx what needs to be removed. In turn, the small platform at the bottom of the mast, on the port side only, needs to be raised to accommodate the removal. It's only visible on Reagan, you can just remove it completely for Bush. 

Both CVN-76 and CVN-77 have only 3 main arrestor wires, all other Nimitz class have 4. Remove wire no 4 (the most forward). as a result the exact placing of the other 3 is not now correct compared to the real ship, but at least my model has the right number of wires. I sanded down- but didn't remove- the wire representing the barrier. Purely personal choice. 

The famous sponson we started with. add part 24D as per instructions, but do not cut out the scored area on the inside. 

As supplied, the area to be removed is about 20mm by 10mm.  

In reality, remove about 13/14mm by 6 or 7mm, and do NOT remove the top horizontal strip otherwise the hole will be too big. 

eyeballed! 

Finished model. Compare to the next photo. There is at least one aftermarket decal sheet purporting to supply the correct size numbers for the island (one sheet even has two different sizes for each side). Use the kit sheet, they are closer. Yes the horizontal line in the middle of the "6" is too high, but again I'm prepared to live with this, at least they are the right height. Of course, if you are building 77 this won't matter! Of note here too is the correct positioning of part 55D, the small tower aft of the island. Italeri would have you position it on the flight deck where the radar tower is on the earlier ships, but it actually goes in the catwalk with a little extra catwalk and railing around it. 

for reference. 

and what's left over 

and more left overs! 

again unmodified, again sorry no credit. It does show the dramatic difference once it's done though. 

Bush's mast showing trimmed middle yardarms and additional angled arm added at rear at lower arm height. Small lower arm removed entirely. 

Hard to see here but Bush's mast is different from Reagan's. The second pair of yardarms can be trimmed back and an additional one stuck on the rear pointing at about 7 or 8 o'clock. 

thanks for looking.