"Ranger" conducted her initial flight operations off the Virginia Capes on 21 June 1934 and departed Norfolk on 17 August for a shakedown training cruise that took her to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo. She returned to Norfolk on 4 October for operations off the Virginia Capes and two stints in dry dock for post trial repairs until 1 April 1935, when she sailed for the Pacific. Transiting the Panama Canal on 7 April, she arrived in San Diego on 15 April. For nearly four years, she participated in fleet problems reaching to Hawaii, the first-ever carrier cold weather test trials in Alaska, and in western seaboard operations that took her as far south as Callao, Peru, and as far north as Seattle, Washington. On 4 January 1939, she departed San Diego for winter fleet operations in the Caribbean based at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She then steamed north to Norfolk, arriving on 20 April.