The problems this time are the magnet rotors came out of the molds about 5mm too big so they foul on the studs that hold the stator - guess I should have done the measuring and drilling AFTER I completed them. A bit of hacking with a router bit in the drill press and spinning the rotors on the hub up against it will trim them up (I have no lathe)!

Next issue was deciding that the varnished blades would suffer in the sun (VERY intense here in NZ) so a white oil based  gloss paint is the answer. The problem there was that the etching primer did just that - it worked just like paint stripper on the varnish and made a complete hash of the finish. I've had to strip back to bare wood and start again. At least it was only the test blade that has required all the extra work - I'm skipping the primer on the other blades and going straight to a good quality undercoat after sanding the varnish well down for a good key.

The blade hubs are next, the tail being cut out and primed ready for its final top coat, drilling and mounting on the tail boom.

Positive progress has been in the cable clamps on the yaw bearing, rectifiers mounted on the heatsink, the arrival of 50m of 85amp flexible starter/welding cable for the run down the mast and the promise of more 150amp/hr truck batteries. Also complete are the 100amp ammeter/voltmeter for monitoring and most of the pump controller parts have arrived. Also sourced a bunch of bakalite 63amp fuses and a 3 phase switch to park (short out) the genny from the local reclamation yard.

Just paint and assembly for the generator and with the rectifiers and batteries ready I'll be ready to test fly in a week or so :-) Hopefully no more setbacks now, its just finding the time with the drought broken by a week of rain, the mowing in the orchard will start again!!