Just tore down my first windmill which was a bit of an experiment just to see what works. It was a tape drive motor with various rotors to try to find the right combination but it flew for nearly a year with very few failures and I am very pleased with it's performance as well as my engineering.
Now I'm ready to move on to something a little better and I need to start with the generator. I think I wold like to convert an induction motor or an automotive alternator to permanent magnet since I'm not quite ready to bite off building my own alternator (I wan't to one day but one step at a time). I've done a search of the board but not really come up with much instruction on conversions and was wondering if anyone had some links with good instructions on conversions that I might be able to put to use.
Here's a picture of the one I just took down. It was on a 20 ft. tower (not 20,000 as one might guess with the airplane:) and I'm going to extend it for the new machine to 40 ft.
