Hello Andrew,
You might want to consider building your own single pad launch control system, relay based, with a battery at the pad. There are many schematics and plans online. For starters this will teach you what's involved in building the basic system. Once you've done that, you will probably want to try a bigger system that will control maybe 4 or 6 pads. Maybe even a dozen pads if you get really ambitious.
Once your club gets big enough to need more than one bank of pads, you will have to think about something bigger.
Right now, there is only one commercially available turn key system that can grow as big as any club or launch out there, and that the Wilson F/X Digital launch control system. As you've already heard it's not cheap, but it works, first time every time.
I did recently have a club complain about one of my 8-pad pad-boxes that according to them, what not working. My first question was, "Are all of your 16/3 outdoor extension cords operating properly?" They answered, "Yes."
They told me that the pad box would give its normal continuity check at the pad, but it would not give a continuity check at the controller, nor would it fire any of the pads on that one pad box.
This was an odd problem that I'd never met before. I got to work with my team and we tried our best to find a way to duplicate the "problem." But we were unable. We were getting into the programming of the IC's wondering if we'd found a random failure mode that we'd never seen before. But no matter what we tried, we still couldn't find anything that could duplicate this problem.
A few days went by, and I got a rather sheepish phone call from that same club member who'd called asking for help. He told me that it turned out that they had used four 25 foot 16/3 outdoor extension cords for the last 100 feet out to their away pads. Someone decided that maybe they should check the last four 25' extension cords and sure enough, one of them was toast (a broken wire - the white one). They replaced it and amazingly, the whole system was operating perfectly again.
Last year, my own club QCRS, called me up from one of their regular monthly club launches because they couldn't get the system to work at all. They were frantic as they had people who wanted to fly and no operating launch control system. It turned out that they had connected the battery at the first pad box reversing the polarity of the power. They'd connected the positive controller power lead to the negative pole of the battery and they'd connected the negative controller power lead to the positive pole on the battery. Nothing was damaged, but the system will not operate with reversed power polarity. They too called back sheepishly, saying, "Oooppppsss!" Once they got the polarity right, the system worked perfectly once more.
I do sell, a single pad controller and a single pad pad box. It plugs into the rest of the Wilson-F/X system and works like any other pad-box with the 64 pad controller. Plus the single pad controller also operates as the Armageddon Switch.
Let me know what you're thinking and any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer you.
If you want me to answer on t his forum, you may want to send me a direct email to
[email protected] and let me know that you've got a question as I do not have the time to browse all the rocket information forums that are out there.
Let me know if you have any questions.
One quick question for you. We're you at the LDRS in Lethbridge? It was a fun LDRS and I had a great time bowling. I can't recall if that was an 8 or 16 pound bowling ball loft. But I do remember that it was parachute duration. I used a 16' silk military surplus cargo parachute and h ad a great time.
Brad the "Rocket Rev.," Wilson