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The Comm Tower is was conceived as communication relay station capable of deep space communications on a newly settled world. The base consists of a small bunker that can house a few troops in during times of need, and the communications mast. The bunker is a precast standardized component designed to mainly resist civilian tampering with a main access door to the equipment and tiny quarters inside. It has two roof hatches to permit access to whatever sort of tower might be mounted on top. |
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| As always, the design was sketched out on graph paper full scale. Basic construction was is from .06" styrene plastic, glued with a disposable syringe and Tenax 7R solvent. |
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| The tubular hatch tunnels were cut from clear acrylic tube, glued with superglue and blened into the bunker walls styrene and modelmaster putty. Brass wire was used for grab handles, rails, and pins for hinges. |
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The stairs are part of an Evergreen styrene plastic kit. Various patterned sheet from Evergreen were also used to make the various screens and vents (blown away by the bad photography) on the equipment boxes on the back of the bunker. The figs in the pics are old GW Imperial Guard and are shown to give a sense of scale. |
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The comm mast was made from Evergreen tube, sheet, and Plastruct vessel flanges (the gray rings near the top of the mast). Again, Tenaz 7R solvebt is used to glue the styrene with a little reinforcing by superglue. The catwalk is wide enough to permit access by the GW style bases on many of my sci-fi figs. The comm mast was assembled to allow the later addition of wires for LEDs to give a little more life to the contraption. |
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The directional dish anteena and dome are clear acrylic vessel ends from Plastruct, brass wire is used for the red aerials; the caged ladder is a 1/48 scale Plastructpiece. Triangular supports for the catwalk extend beyond the edge of the platform to give a rigid mounting point for the vertical railsupports. The rail itself is made from .02" thick by '06 wide styrene strip. I curved the strip by rapping it around a small bottle, attacked one end to a support, then worked may way around the the carwalk attaching to the supports with solvent as I went. A second strip was glued inside the fist to give the rail more strength. |
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The base is painted with Polly Scale Israeli Kahki, "metal" parts are painted with Vallejo Russian Green. The base was then weathered with a several mixes of Polly scale Old concrete and Israeli kakhi to bring out the waffle pattern a bit and dust up the green parts. |
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| The waffle pattern was made by painting a coat of artist's acrylic paste onto the masonry surfaces of the bunker, letting it surface dry, and then pressing fiberglass drywall tape into the semi dried paste. |
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| The roof of the bunker is press fit in place, and is removable to permit eventual interior detailing and battery installation for the LEDs |
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