| I thought others may wish to comment on my observations of the behavior of the tail on my 10 footer. The tail is about 5 square feet on the end of a 5 foot boom as can be seen here and here.
In very low winds, the generator is yawing (now I've greased the bearing) and the tail is pointing the blades straight into the wind.
As the wind increases and the generator reaches cutin voltage, the blades are pushed out of the wind by as much as 30-50 degrees so the tail and blades are sometimes making equal angles to the wind.
As the wind increases further (in the 10-20 amp load region), the tail starts to take control again and the plane of the blades comes to within about 20 degrees of the wind.
More wind and the blades are just starting to furl (i.e. its the blades that move after all, the tail just sits downwind!) but as it does so, the force on the blades of course drops off so, the blades swing back, the tail whips round 30 degrees the other way with the result that the blades almost stall. Its still too gusty the last couple of days to see if this will set up an oscillation in a steady wind (and the tower isn't jacked up high enough for clean air anyway!).
My thinking is that my tail is a bit too small in area although I think the weight is about right (still waiting for really strong winds to test that though).
Have I got the theory about right do you think? |
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