Two blade, trailing rotor design. Hub is made of two disks which act as though they were on a splined shaft sliding together and apart while rotating together. The aft disk is compression sprung (pulled towards) the fore disk and has levers which act on the blades. The blades are around 5 degrees at rest and are setup to move as the wind pushes them in order to prevent overspeed conditions while loaded. They can move back to roughly 70 degrees. Ideally, shorting the generator (not installed yet) will pull the speed way down and the wind will just push the blades back such that not much resistance is offered to the rig. Under normal use conditions the spring would be adjusted such that constant power is delivered even though the wind speed is changing. Setup on this part is adjustable to whatever the heart desired though with centrifugally actuated designs also possible.
I'm thinking a hybrid system with the blades sprung back for high starting torque but pulled forward by centrifugal force could be fun to play with. Perhaps using a cam setup (lever that goes past center as the weights move farther out) it could be made to hunt the sweet-speed during high wind speeds?
Can't get photos of it tonight as my old digital camera doesn't work without really bright light (sunlight or bust!) I'll try to get some tomorrow.
Trot, the tinkerin', fox...
