Although I am not planning my first minimum diameter build until the spring my Dad is retiring, so I am about to lose the chance to have some very sweet launch tower parts made by a serious metal worker. Therefore, I slapped together the best plans I could and turned creative license over to him. Below you see his handy work. With these parts all I have to do is acquire the rails, cut and tap them, and assemble. Deburring and some edge softening may also be in order...sharp buggers as my right pointer finger can attest.
The plan (pdf attached) is not really all that original, just borrowed/copied/modified ideas and feature many many tower designs posted about into a Frankentower. The idea was to have a single tower from 38 mm through I am never going to fly that. I like to make things one time, that's it, so I tried to make this thing expandable and super robust. Which is why it is way overkill for 38 mm MD, but that's where I'm starting. The outer rails will be the 8020 aluminum extrusion 10 series we are all familiar with. The inner will be a curved variant thereof. See the attached pdf for the catalog spec sheets on each.
The only real deviation from the plans is that 1/4-20 threading was used for everything, and that the ground spike is removable.
View attachment tower_plans_revised.pdf
The plan (pdf attached) is not really all that original, just borrowed/copied/modified ideas and feature many many tower designs posted about into a Frankentower. The idea was to have a single tower from 38 mm through I am never going to fly that. I like to make things one time, that's it, so I tried to make this thing expandable and super robust. Which is why it is way overkill for 38 mm MD, but that's where I'm starting. The outer rails will be the 8020 aluminum extrusion 10 series we are all familiar with. The inner will be a curved variant thereof. See the attached pdf for the catalog spec sheets on each.
The only real deviation from the plans is that 1/4-20 threading was used for everything, and that the ground spike is removable.
View attachment tower_plans_revised.pdf
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