Remote outpost 1 - Communications Tower

I've had three white plastic (acrylic) ceiling emergency exit sign housings in my stash for at least a decade. For a long time I would dig them out and ponder what to do with them without much success. Years later I got hold of four plastic boxes which were the outer casing of small parts draws.  With these boxes on hand a concept bubbled up and I thought of the exit signs as the basis for a sensor array of a coms tower of some sort.

At the time I did a rough pencil sketch of the concept which has unfortunately been lost in a hard drive death. 

The concept however had been firmly etched on my brain and so I decided now is the time to start to put it all together.

The picture below shows the nearly 2 metre high structure. It is constructed in sections to enable easily breaking down for future transport.

The base section is a length of yellow PVC Gas main pipe with a 9mm plywood disc glued in one end. On top of the plywood is screwed a 150mm PVC pipe end cap. 

The next section comprises a 500mm length of  150mm pvc pipe which push fits into the end cap. Two 9mm ply supports then hold three of the plastic parts draw boxes arranged radially around the pipe. 

The third section starts with a 150mm PVC end cap to which is bolted a 90mm pvc flange. Over the flange is glued a cone shape from a cut down acrylic bowl. A length of 90mm storm water pipe is then glued into the flange. More 9mm ply supports are then slid over and glued with superglue to the 90mm pipe to support the exit signs. On top of the 90mm pipe is a 90mm ground vent to which is glued a surround from a plastic battery operated push light with a disc of more 9mm ply. To the ply is glued a 40mm pipe reducer with the small end down glued through a hole in the plywood disc.

The final section is made from an assortment of PVC pipe and reducers until it ends with some grey  PVC electrical conduit at the top. There are a couple of black polycarbonate side flanges from Prusa filament reels as platforms as well as kit part electrical boxes. Some smaller bits of PVC pipe with domed end caps make up the cylindrical shapes on the top platform. In the pictures below I have a Bruder toy figure for reference at 1/16 scale. The blue grey antennae is ( I think) from a Star Wars B wing transformers toy.

This is just the start of this project with a great deal of surface detail still to come. So far it has turned out very like the original design sketch as I remember it, which is promising.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...

Film Can Spaceship part 4

The Film Can Spaceship project has finally concluded with the paint phase.

The base colour for the model was Tamiya FS-3 Dark Yellow using spray cans. I used two and a half cans.

Variations in panel colours were hand painted using Lifecolour acrylics using three colours applied from a wet palette.

Pin wash was burnt umber oil colour heavily diluted with odourless turps.

Dry brushed with artists acrylic paint from a tube using a flesh colour.

The panel and edge chipping was laboriously hand painted using a fine brush, it took three days just for this step.

 Here are the completed pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Engine lights on, got a little bit of bleed going on.

 

 

The following four pictures show the underside.

 

 

 

 

 

Just finished this project on the last day of 2023.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...

Film Can Spaceship part 3

 Next task was detailing the backplate of the engines. The inner nozzles are made from the rims of a rubbish truck toy with outer rings made from the screw on caps of pop-up sprinklers. The inner thread of the sprinkler has been machined away on the mini lathe.

 Followed up with a hit of grey primer to check the result.

I then moved on to detailing of the top sides of the film cans with 1mm and 2mm plates of styrene sheet arranged around the 3D printing filament reel sides. I then added some scribed panels and a sprinkling of kit parts.

After finishing the top section of both cans I sprayed one with primer to check, was satisfied with the result and  sprayed the second can.

Progressing on from that I turned the cans over to detail the undersides. Here I followed the same procedure except that after spraying the first can with primer I felt a little more detail was required so scraped and sanded away the primer in the spots I wanted to add more nurnies. This I did to both cans and then sprayed primer once again over the new nurnies to check and then repeated the primer application on the second can.

I then decided to detail the landing pads. They were removed by pushing out the brass tube pin. Evergreen textured sheet was used along with some tank trackshoes. The top details are the wheels from the Tamiya 1/35 scale British 25 pounder field gun kit. I cut the spokes to remove the wheel hub.

 Next it was on to completing the detailing on the engine pod and the rest of the long skinny Nerf gun hull section. The picture below shows the finished top of the engine section.

Below is the underneath of the engine section.

Rear landing pod cross beam top followed by underside. The piping is a mix of solid ABS rod heat bent, for the larger diameters and single strand solid core electrical wiring.

Then a few photos of the rest of the Nerf Nitron hull finishing with the front panel kit part detailing.

The next logical step was to check the result of all that work with... you guessed it... some grey primer.

I sprayed the primer with an outside temperature of 38.6 degrees celsius.  It did not take very long to dry. We are in the midst of a record breaking heatwave at the moment.

A lot of the top of the Nerf hull is going to be covered by the film cans and bridge section so I deliberately left the detailing fairly crude as you will only see it side on and predominantly in shadow.

I am going to hold off final assembly till after paint as it is going to be a lot simpler masking and painting the separate sections before mounting them permanently.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...