CONTROL TOWER

Large Scale Lighting and Detailing

After a visit to my local recycling centre, ie. the dump, I came away with an acrylic, hexagonal aquarium, a plastic surround for a bathroom vent and some sort of child’s soft plastic “arena”. I started to put these together to form a large building that eventually became the Control Tower.

The original layout of the three main sections of the building. I used toy slot car tracks to subdivide the building faces and made a hexagonal “lid” from styrene sheet and Evergreen strips. Tamiya masking tape, 6mm in width, was added to form the many windows. This tape would be removed after painting to allow the lighting to shine through them. Many, many bits of Evergreen plastic strip were added to five of the sides to simulate the details and framing.

Six LEDs were positioned around the top corners of the hexagonal lid and all the wiring joined underneath and powered by a pair of AA batteries. Two, 12 volt incandescent bulbs illuminated the interior. A transformer plugs into the rear of the building to power them. They are suspended along a pair of brass rods so that they evenly light up the interior.

The rear of the building was detailed with various kit, resin and toy pieces, along with plastic strips and pacer pencil lead containers. A 12-sided, clear plastic food container, atop a hexagonal toy kaleidoscope continued the geometrical pattern of the building. This was lit with a blue LED through the windows, along with a flashing red LED on top of a cone-shaped plastic toy. Detailing again consisted of a few kit parts, resin cast pieces and a lot of Evergreen strip.

The helijet landing platform started life as a plastic lid from a chocolate box with added detailing of kit parts, Evergreen strip and styrene plastic. The two lower sections of the building also received added detailing in the form of styrene plastic and more Evergreen strip. They were screwed and glued together firmly to form the base for the tower.

A lighting test on the incomplete Control Tower. The finished model was primed and then painted with acrylic lacquers and weathered appropriately with an airbrush after fine details of decals and car pinstriping tape were added.