Another Furling Idea

[Walt]

High winds always seem to hit when the weather is bad or when you are not around to

shut the mill down. I came up with a way to furl the mill in such situations and

want to see what other members here think.

The first drawing shows the mill in the furled position. The disk that the tail is

mounted to is able to rotate from a pivot pin and is held to the yaw shaft under

cleats. The tail boom is positioned to the left of the pivot pin which should allow

the tail to be furled by releasing the tension on the down guy. There are stops on

the pivot disk that will only allow the disk to rotate the tail pivot pin just past center allowing the tail to furl.





In the unfurled position the cable is pulled tight causing the disk to rotate to the

right. The tail boom pin is rotated to a position of 18 to 20 degrees and will allow

the tail to furl in the usual manner.

With the pin located on the inside of the pivot pin, when the cable is released the

weight of the tail should cause the disk to rotate and the mill to furl. With the

precision cutting that folk are getting with water jet cutters it would be easy to

get a disk cut to the correct shape.

All comments welcome.

[Flux]

Walt

Not sure what has gone wrong with the page, drawings are right size but page is huge

took me ages to find the post comment thing.

The idea is sound but I am not sure that a disc rotating like that will work for long without rusting up(at least in this country). I think you can simplify it to a single pivot.

The big snag is that you have a control rope where it is best to put the cable.

I have done things like this in the past with good results but it used a simple equivalent of slip rings for the power. The site was so bad and the wind so twisty that a direct cable connection may not have been practical in this case.

I normally prefer to use a sleeve sliding on the outside for the tail control and keep the wires down the middle. Some have suggested using the cable as a control rope but the force is more than I would want the cables to take and you would have to offset the cable weight with long cables.

Good basic idea, I am sure you can make it work.

Flux

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

A:  Don't see why you need a disk when a lever (weighted at the end) and a second pivot would do nicely (unless it's to provide a bigger lever arm riding against the genny frame to support the side forces).  All you're doing is changing the angle of the tail's primary pivot.

B:  Why not just use a rope and pulley to pull the tail into furling position without diddling with the angle of the tail pivot?  (Only difference would be that you'd pull to furl rather than to unfurl - and you could flip that by using a weight to provide the furling force and your pull rope to lift the weight to take its force off the tail.)

[Walt]

The reason I thought about furling this way was that the mill will be furled if anything goes wrong. The lever on the disk is only there to have a place to attach the cable and wouldn't have to be as long as shown. If the mill needed to be shut down it could be furled to slow it down before shorting the leads.

I don't know why the post is so spread out, if any one knows what caused this please let me know so that I can correct it in the future.