I’ve had various (ed: poor) success with building things competitions in the past. I’ve singularly failed to finish a single one I’ve entered, even the Build Something Small and Encounter Terrain 10×10, both of which were small things. So the natural thing to do was to organize the next round of Building Something Competition (BSC) on Lead Adventure!

If you’re not familiar with BSC, it is a friendly competition on the Lead Adventure Forum, running for more than a decade. Both Brian and I have entered at various times, he’s even finished something:

Build Something 2017: The Bloodyear Blomp

BSC 2018: 1956 PANG continued

Build Something Contest 2021

An entry for Lead Adventure’s Build Something Competition 2022 – a farm!

Concepts

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to build this year – either a spaceport or a vertical mill thing for my hellscape terrain. As you can probably gather from the title, I decided on a spaceport. I’ve been doodling a few different options for a little bit, starting with one giant 12″x18″ piece, but nothing was really gelling for me.

So I decided to try a few different layouts in FreeCAD, see what I liked. I found this cardboard tube from something paper that I wanted to use as the main upright. And I knew I wanted a 9″x9″ building for the main warehouse building. I initially tried a single larger building on a 12″x12″ base, but that didn’t work either. I also tried the landing pad on a big 12″x12″ base. I also didn’t like that

So I decided to split it into multiple bases, the building and starport each on one. And I knew I needed a way to have pads lift up into the sky, so I decided on magnets and printed pads. That is what the orange vertical pieces are – holders for either magnets or metal strips. Those pads will land on a yet another 6″x”6 base.

Printing things!

I’ve been fighting off some sort of stomach issue for the past few weeks, so progress has been slow, but I finally have printed pieces ready to show at least. But first, a whole lot of failures. I needed to find out if I’d measured the tube correctly (which I hadn’t) and then I decided to use an empty pill bottle as a fuel tank to add on. So several failed prints for those look like this:

And finally, the printed pieces (mostly). I haven’t been able to print the holder fully successfully yet, but that is next to go on the printer again tonight. But I have the borders at least done – base, starport base, landing pad base and fuel tank.

You can find all the current entries on the Lead Adventure Forum BSC subforum, including my own.