Brian's wind turbine returned to sky (image heavy)

[Boss]

Good Morning and hallelujah


Kevin and I set the new Cedar wind turbine blades with a wooden disks left over from one of the last sets I guess. Anyway,I found them in the shop and we employed them just as quick,which helped get the blade set together quicker.

I love the shape but will it harvest enough energy from the wind to spin our new alternator to its full potential?

This set is replacing a six inch blade length smaller set. It will be a tough act to follow Wind Swept Area formula for blade length is:5 feet = 1.524 m swept area = pi * r2 = 1.8241m2

Kevin balancing the blades. The key in our case where we have a poorly constructed magnet rotor is balancing the blades in place. This image is from Saturday,we pulled the turbine down again twice on Sunday and added more lead weights to two of the blades because there was a severe wobble

Brian getting ready to use the breaker bar to really tighten the bolts on the blades.

Thank goodness the shop is close,we had to run for tools while the other guy waited,I can't count how many times.

The turbine seems to be working well. We only had 5 to 10 mile per hour winds to check it out.

Here the turbine is rising via energy over the gin pole connected to the red Blazer,which has conveniently placed hooks in the front bumper

Another shot of the Blazer lifting the turbine

Kevin holds back on a rope connected to the top of the turbine so that when it reaches the top of the pivot it sets gently down.

Our tower is easy to work. Sunday I made a new cable going from the vehicle to the gin pole so that the vehicle is out of the fall zone.

All we need to do to secure the tower in the upright position is bolt a plate of heavy steel on the gin pole

Yippie she flies

BMN wind turbine returned to sky

BMN wind turbine returned to sky

Okay our puppies are chomping at the bit to go for a walk so I gotta git

Sincerely,
Brian Rodgers

[Watt]

Congrats, can't wait to see how those cool blades turn out.     They sure look nice.

[Boss]

Thanks Watt,
It seems like trouble is keeping perfect pace with all of my attempts at good deeds.
I drove my mother to the hospital at 6:00AM for a scheduled endoscopy, good deed right? As we were leaving the hospital a local first responder called and said my wife was in an accident on the way to work
Crap, now what? Anyway I pulled back into the space I just backed out of at the hospital and saw the ambulance pull in. She is okay, mostly bruised badly, no broken bones, sigh. We're back home, she is resting I should be as well, but I need to locate her car, and see what if anything went wrong to cause it to veer off the road. Much figuring will be needed to come up with a plan for a replacement car if needed, or whatever, like I said, "Crap, now what?" 

[kitestrings]

Brian,

Where to start, congrat's (on the turbine up) and sorry (on the accident).

Your blades are pretty neat.  What sort of production have you seen?  It is hard to tell from the pics, but the pipe size looks a little small at the top section.  Maybe it is heavy gauge - hard to read that from here.

good luck with it.

~kitestrings