800mm long 50mm barrel
1300mm long 40mm golfball barrel
~1300mm long 50mm chamber
25mm pneumatically actuated sprinkler valve pilot
Male quick-connect for the fill valve
50mm plywood piston machined down on a lathe and water sealed.
50mm female threaded port
45mm seat
40mm piston travel
Versatile Antenna Launcher or VAL for short, is a 2" piston valve pneumatic I made for a school project. It's main function was to shoot a fishing cable attached to a pocket nerf but i've also made it very versatile.
It can shoot golfballs, potatoes, pocket nerfs, deodorant cans or anything else that fits in a golfball or 2" barrel. One of my main features I wanted this gun to have was breech loading. I learned from the SGA that having to unthread the barrel from the adapter to load a potato, clean the barrel or having to use a ram rod to get a projectile to the bottom, was taking a toll on me.
But I wanted it to be able to have interchangeable barrels while keeping the breech loading mechanism simple. I got the idea from a nerf launcher posted on Youtube that we had a discussion about. The main goal was to build a cannon that would pass me the assignment but still be powerful so I didn't waste my money.
For the assignment the operating pressures will be 30psi max, which sends the nerf with cable attached, about 70m. I've taken this up to 90psi so far, hopefully more but it drains my compressor fast. Everything seems to work perfectly as well, I learned from my mistakes with the SGA. This works first time, every time and seems a lot more powerful.
I documented the building process with pictures so I can replace my old piston how-to. It may take me a few days to write it up. If you're wondering how the breech loading works, I just bored out two 50mm PVC tee's so they slide over 50mm pipe. I then joined them with an adapter and made the right height adjustments. The barrel simply slides through the top tee and locks into the coupler attached to the female threaded adapter.
To load, simply pull the barrel out of the coupler, load your projectile and close it.
Video coming soon.
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Incase my Photobucket account goes down
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Last edited by MrCrowley on 06/13/2008 16:36 PM; edited 6 times in total
Nice Versatile Antenna Launcher you've got there MrCrowley, you did a good job.
Looks nicer then the SGA too.
p.s its good that you posted images with photobucket, because the one you posted using the sites unloader doesn't work for me (as always)
Last edited by Pyro Ninja on 05/31/2008 22:32 PM; edited 1 time in total
Cheers, i'm not painting the 2" barrel for the reason that it wont slide so well in the tee, later on I could always sand the tee down a bit more and leave the barrel to dry for about a week. Then it shouldn't scratch the paint job too badly.
I clean it with CRC every now and then and it gets really white and doesn't look so bad.
I hope he wants to shoot it, then he spreads the word to other teachers and they might stop hassling me
Thanks starman, I know you like your clean cannons too.
The beige colour was unfortunate, I was looking for a colour similar to the green from the SGA, but they only had dark green (which i've tried beofre and hated) and a very light sand colour. So I settled for what i've nicknamed 'Iraqi Freedom'.
Not sure why, but as soon as I saw this colour I just thought of George Bush saying 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'
And since I wanted a colour from the camo spectrum, I had to settle for this.
And yeah the pilot is very similar, I bought a bunch of those 3 way galv fittings and they work perfect for this. Very ergonomic design for my application I thought.
Video is coming very, very shortly. Just waiting on YouTube.
Now that you mention it....that sand color will work well as a base for a real camo job on there. Not sure how you could accomplish it but that new digital camo would really set that gun off.... Even a simpler one would too I believe.
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, good job again.
was that an attempt to make a "flying V" that you were shooting ..... Lol
