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Old 09-13-2017, 01:45 PM
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BEC BEC is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Auburn, Washington
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Default Pictures and scans

Here is what I wound up with.

For the stickers I wound up setting up a camera (my iPhone 7 Plus) on a tripod and making sure it was parallel to the surface where I laid the stickers. Then I took some advantage of natural diffuse light (on the front porch on an overcast day) and got what looks to me to be a clear enough image that someone who wanted to use it as an underlay to redraw the stickers in Corel or some such as a prelude to making reproductions. I hope it is.

Also attached is a scan of the instructions, a picture of the little extra bits (the push nuts and the spring-based standoff), and some of the blast deflector. Perhaps the blast deflector images will be useful in refining that solid CAD model a few posts back.

These stickers went on the parts just fine in spite of their age and the Power Tower was one of eight "classic" launchers we used at our club launch last Saturday. See fourth picture for the whole cast of characters before I strung out the wiring for the launch controllers. The Big Foot and the Power Tower (and the blue Electron beam on the far right) launched their very first rockets ever last Saturday.

I didn't use both push nuts in assembling my Power Tower so that the blast deflector would not be permanently attached to the launch rod. Instead I put the upper push nut and the spring on a rod and used a 1/8 inch model airplane wheel collar (which is held in place with a setscrew) under the deflector so I could - and did - take the deflector off for storage.


Geeky detail: In digging into old launchers I found that the Centuri Power Tower went from tall to wide at the same time as the Estes Porta Pad (whose plastic parts are interchangeable with the Centuri unit) - in the 1982 catalogs. I believe the sticker set could be reproduced and used on a black Estes Porta Pad to reproduce the later version of the Power Tower (along with the ID-65 blast deflector or a facsimile thereof). To complete the illusion one would want to change the model number on the sticker to 5601 to match the 1982-1983 Centuri unit.

As far as I know, the earlier taller version was never sold in black by Estes, so to make one of those earlier ones into a Power Tower clone one would have to paint it black I guess.
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Attached Files
File Type: pdf PowerTowerInstructions_2.pdf (586.0 KB, 34 views)
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