The "R.P.D.O. micro"

No, we haven't gotten the plans for you yet, but keep pestering us and we'll get them done for you. We are making progress on the "R.P.D.O. mini II" plans. we hope to get them released in their final form shortly.

This page, has a few more pictures of the ramp, with a focus on construction details. so you can see how really simple it is. We figured we'lld get this page up, while you wait for us to learn to draw plans, and get over our severe writers block. you can click on any of the pictures shown here to get a larger version. If you have a question about anything, first check and see if it's answered in our FAQs section, and if it's not just ask us. If you want to see a better picture of anything, again, just ask us.

The plans we're actually going to post will most likely not be of this exact ramp. It'll be the "R.P.D.O. mini II" which will have less tight transitions, and hopefully be a bit cheaper to build.

The pictures on this ramp show several interesting things.

You can see how we built the ramp in sections, and then just sort of sloppily screwed those sections to each other. Actually we put the first layer of plywood on each section and then screwed the sections together. This was so if we ever wanted to take it a part we would only have to take off the top two layers and then we could move the sections around individually.

You can also see that we rest the corner of each section on masonry blocks. We actually leveled all the blocks first, by using a string level, digging a hole for each masonry block so that it came up even with the string. What you can't see is we gave it a 1/8" grade to the side to help water drain off the ramp faster. trust us you don't notice that while riding it.

You can see the rather steep transition that our pseudo-elliptical transition trick gave us. Check out the FAQs section for more info on that.

You can see how we bolted the coping through the back of the ramp, with anchor bolts. We actually had a little trouble getting the anchors to open up inside the pipe. But in the end it was worth attaching it this way. No holes on top, and nice solid coping. We put three bolts in each pipe to hold them in place.

You'll notice that their are no cross braces for the sections and no vertical supports for the deck. It turns out that by using such small 4' sections the ramp is actually very strong. 3/4' plywood is pretty strong stuff itself. We we're going to add some angle bracing and vertical supports, but since it was so sturdy we never ended up doing it.