Istvaan III Table: Comms Tower

Keepy here,

Now for the biggest of them all...

I couldn't help myself. I just had to one up the bell tower and reach for the stars with the most vertically endowed building to date - The Comms Tower!

This is the template I had chosen for the structure. Four tiles wide at the base going to two rows of three then a single tier of two wide.

Initial build is the same as the previous buildings, sides were constructed then pinned to a double layer of cork:

I then started to add Juwella tiles to the base... only to find I would run out with 1/3 of the floor to go...

To take out my frustrations, I weathered the tiles with the back end of a ball pein hammer - I love the way shattering plaster tiles looks! Several strikes later and I was back in the frame of mind to sort out the issue at hand.

There were no tiles left in stock in Australia that I could find, so I came up with an ad-hock solution which seemed to work quite well: Adding an elevated stage. This was constructed using left over "fence" pieces from the GW building sets, cork and plasticard. I also used the steps from another GW building set.

With the elevated stage taken care of, it was time to make the first floor. I differed slightly from my usual floor building techniques by having hardly any overhang to make the building look more slender.

As usual, this was magnetised and the floor was then build on for the next set of levels.

It was at this point I realised that I had added an extra floor on the base level of the building... Oh well, more height I guess!

 

As I mentioned before, there is hardly any room on the edge of the added floor. You can fit a 25mm base in between the vertical supports on the outside of the building:

On with the next floor, this is technically the top floor but I plan on having a small "comms room" on the top of this level for radios and a antenna tower:

The Comms Tower thus far:

I then started work on a antenna mast and comms room. The mast was made out of GW ladders and a plastic building truss strengthened with a couple of I Beams glued onto it's vertical sections:

Radio room now mounted:

And now the completed product, battle damaged and also magnetised antenna mast!

Well there you go, a very pic heavy post on a single structure that took a long time to build! I am glad I improvised with filling in missing floor tiles rather than wait for more to become available, the payoff was excellent. It also used up some spares in the bits box which were sitting around doing nothing!.

So this officially finishes the construction phase of the Istvaan III Table, from here on in it is painting! It has been a long time coming but really happy with how this whole project is going. As always, I look forward to your comments, critiques and ideas.

Talk soon

Keepy

Links:

http://www.back2base-ix.com

Istvaan III Table: Concept and Design
Istvaan III Table: Battleframe 5000 Tile Construction
Istvaan III Table: Battleframe 5000 Tile Construction Complete!
Istvaan III Table: Road Sections
Istvaan III Table: Bell Tower
Istvaan III Table: Proxy Fit 1
Istvaan III Table: Governor's Residence
Istvaan III Table: Proxy Fit 2
Istvaan III Table: Habitation Block + Back2Base-ix Promo!
Istvaan III Table: Crater Tiles
Istvaan III Table: Building and RampTiles
Istvaan III Table: Battle Damaged Roads
Istvaan III Table: Table Update
Istvaan III Table: Comms Tower