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The story of the $10 rail pad - (Italics text answers e-mail questions)

I had a nice rod system with a nice PVC base that was easy to disassemble and haul around. However, after checking out Jerry's rail and fiddling with changing rods I said, "forget this." I did some surfing and came across Railbuttons.com and ordered up a slew of buttons for next to nothing. So now I needed a rail. The first six foot rail I found online was almost $60 without shipping!! Again, that got a big, "forget this." After doing some searching I found some for less, but the damage was going to be around $30. That's not a terrible sum of money but my main design goal was to utilize as many parts that I already had in my shop and buying one defeats the whole, "Yep, I built it" karma you get from doing it yourself. I did some digging at the local hardware stores and found some C (***maybe you should read that U) shaped rails in the shelving section but nothing that would work without some assembly. (***read use 2 pieces of this to make a single rail.) So I bought up 2 six foot sections and a pine board to be the spine. Less than $10. And that's all I spent building this pad. So here we go...

***Before we start let's settle the main question people asked -- THIS IS NOT A SINGLE PIECE RAIL. IT'S TWO PIECES OF METAL FACING EACH OTHER TO MAKE A SINGLE RAIL.

On the left, you can see that this is two separate pieces. On the right -- At the bottom end, two bolts with nuts and washers hold the pieces together at just enough spacing for the railbuttons.

On the left, we see how the wood screws hold the rail to the wood spine. These must be attached to the spine before the rail is attached as the screw heads and washer won't go between the 1/4 inch space between pieces of steel. On the right, we see a rail button in the channel. Note there is lots of room and ZERO chance of snags. The closest thing is the wood screw heads and they are NOT close.

Here we see a railbutton mounted on an Estes BullPup in the channel.

Here is the spine and 2 sections of metal. Note at left end I have 2 bolts through the rail with spacers (nuts and washers) to set the spacing for my buttons. This connects the 2 separate pieces of metal together with space between them (1/4 inch or so) for the button to slide down between. This leaves about 5 feet of the rail for actual use. The rail is not stiff enough to maintain that distance all the way to the end so to hold the rail I put heavy duty wood screws and brass washers every 6 inches up the spine.

As simple as this looks, it wasn't so readily apparent when I was trying to decide how I was going to put it together. My father helped immensely when he said, "Don't do that. Just put screws in it." Thanks, Dad. It worked.

This looks easy... sliding the rail under the washers down the spine -- but it wasn't. It was a big pain. However, this is very secure and allows for the rail to be adjusted later if it gets whacked or dropped. Try that with a $60 one piece rail. (You can't -- it will be bent and thus useless)

Now that I had a rail, I needed a base. I did some thinking and kept thinking about a tripod system. But then I would see this GE power supply chasis I had. Finally, I said, "why do I need a tripod?" I removed all the wire and garbage left in the chasis and drilled 2 holes in the front of the chasis. I made the holes big enough that I can get about a 5 degree tilt to either side with the rail to adjust for wind. I figure if I need more than that, you can always put something under the base. I sprayed a fresh coat of gray primer on it and then mounted the blast deflector -- which was, again, a freebie already in the shop. I used an old Quantum Big Foot hard drive that was dead as dead can be. I removed the circuit board and wires so all that was left was the thick aluminum case. Effective, nothing to burn and pretty cool looking to boot.

Here is a close-up of the rail mounted on the base. I used two solid steel carriage bolts with washers and wing nuts for quick and easy mounting.

Flip side of above.

And here is the final result. A cool rail that even my smallest Estes kits fit on, as well as the big rockets we all like so well.

The kit shown is a Launch Pad Harpoon with my paint scheme on it.

Really neat stuff and it was the nice price. The base is very heavy and is very, very stable. For anyone thinking the base isn't big enough, I assure you, it would take a great deal of effort to turn over, much more than the wind or launching of a rocket. All-in-all, I impressed myself with the quality of the finished product for the cost. It pays to be resourceful. Not to mention some of the items that won't just be cluttering the shop anymore! The pad launches rockets very, very well. I am very pleased with it and I flew in very windy conditions just today. The pad was stable and didn't even jiggle. The rockets stayed in place and didn't shake the clips off the igniter while I was waiting between gusts of wind. It gets an A+ in performance hands down.

*** LEVEL 1 update -- this great pad launched my 5lbs. scratch built rocket for my HP Level 1 Certification and it did it without even thinking about it. You can read that story here. *The pad has also launched L2 rockets by other WVSOAR flyers. It's a champ.

The new launch system

Moving into the realm of firing Aerotech motors requires a bigger kick than a few Energizers and the cable from your Estes starter kit. Nothing new there. But after watching a cluster motor launch fail from a car battery because the current was going down a 100 foot extension cord -- I decided I want lots of juice right by my pad.

Here is the result -- the Ammo Box of Wire Burning Power. Or something like that. Again, I had the box so it was used for the use what you have goal. The box connects the the firing control via 106 feet of Cat 5 Ethernet cable.

Here's the inside of the power machine. That's FOUR Portalac 12V sealed lead acid batteries at 4000 mAh each. That's 16,000 all together!! See the big blue cylinders? -- That's 40,000 uF each -- 80,000 uF total of extra juice come firing time. The box has disarm switches and continuity check on the box as well as a plug-in for my solar panel charger (not shown) that keeps the box charged at the field and for a 12V charger at home.

The output from the box is through binding posts that allow for changing between igniter cords very quickly. Here's my dual motor set.

For those of you who have looked around my rocket site -- this is the range box I made back in 1997. I removed the D cells and added 2 9V batteries in parallel to power the relay in the Box of Wire Burning Power. Yes, that is the power supply shell from an old IBM workstation/terminal. You got me. My secret is out. I also have a hand held remote control stlye one as well. (See below. The above launcher is no longer used, again see update below.)

Testing the new launch system

I fired off an A8-3 to test out the system. Sounds less than stellar and it looked less than stellar when I was doing it -- but the video turned out really cool in slow motion. It's worth a look and is a great example of why you need GOOD recovery protection.

Watch the movie here.

UPDATES! The system after three years of heavy duty flying from As to Js and everything in between.