I've had one of these for a year now, although it's much modified.
I too made some PVC blades out of pipe after Mrs Slog broke the originals when the gen was on the floor one day, and it worked well for a while until I had some very strong winds one night. You will find that the metal case is not up to the job when you mount heavier blades on it, mine took a lot of punishment but eventually a blade mount tore. I think it was centrifugal force, the magnet housing looked distinctly triangular, and I lost several magnets!
I got around this by cutting a huge 'washer' of aluminium that went over the magnet housing and in diameter about 1/4" past the blade tabs. I then used this to mount the blades, drilling through the remaining original tabs.
I've also had to replace the bearing arrangement, I made a roller bearing housing and used that. And wound a coil that gives less volts/more amps.
Please note, I'm in no way criticising the build of the minigen I bought from Ed. I asked it to do stuff that it wasn't made for, and then had to modify to accomodate this.
"Slowly changing the world, one watt at a time!"
