Some thing similar happened to me a few days ago. We were having gust at around 30 mph. I woke up that morning to see that somehow the bridge rectifier I had bolted to the frame of the windmill was gone so basically it was running unloaded; the tail had also fallen down but the machine was still tracking the wind.
All of a sudden a big gust came and the prop revved up amazingly fast, a fraction of a second later a loud bang!!! The blade with the lead ballast ripped itself from the hub and flew away; the machine, still turning heavily unbalanced started jumping and fell off the pole. It all happened right before my eyes!! It was pretty awesome!!
I didn't find the blade the flew off, but I did find the bridge rectifier.
I was lucky this was a small 5 foot machine and no one/myself got hurt.
Lesson learned: build it like a tank!!!
Warrior
Warrior__
"Why can't Murphy's Law be used to my advantage??"
