Okay its been a little while since an update, although I did have a separate post about the tower. I've been trying to get all the little details finished up. I have assembled the 48' portion of the tower, have the generator, tail, etc. all together on the stub tower, painted, greased, reworked the slip ring assembly with a new cord, made a pvc junction box. This Friday I hope to have a crane come if the weather cooperates and will get the whole assembly up there. I have a few different questions if anyone can help.
This has the springs for the blade furling, 3 of them and they all 3 seem really stiff. Is this normal? I can't even tell if I can pull one apart by hand so I don't see how they will work. Does anyone know if there is a certain spring rate? I figured old springs would get softer, not stiffer but I am starting to wonder if they should be replaced some how.
Another spring issue I am wondering is the long spring for the tail. Even with the tail sideways with the safety chain holding it I couldn't stretch it enough by hand to hook it up. I had to take the safety chain off and hook it up and then it took a second person to help turn the tail straight enough to hook the safety chain. I have enough of the original pull chain to go through the stub tower but with the force it appears to take to turn this, I am wondering about switching to cable completely since I will need to get enough to reach a hand winch anyways.
On the tower, its a 48' 3 leg angle iron tower original with the wind generator. + the 5' stub tower. The very top section is 8' with diagonal braces from 40-44' and 44'-48' the top 44-48' diagonal braces do not have a adjustable bracket and one strap appears to have some slop in it. There was one strap missing and I made a new one but its not the one that looks loose. I am starting to wonder if the one that was missing was adjustable and that one strap would maybe tension the other 5 up? I've looked around everywhere and haven't found another tower to compare it to.
As far as charging my 48 volt bank with the 140 volt output I have a midnite classic 150 that I currently use with the solar that I will borrow and see how it works, might need to go to a midnite 200 anyways. I was going to use a blocking diode in between the generator and controller. I don't know if the furling on the Jacobs works good enough to not have a dump load. I think I can use a ssr for diversion from the classic to turn on heating elements or a heater. Not sure if this is a good enough of an approach or not. I will probably watch it like a hawk also and shut it down before any real bad winds hit until I am comfortable with it. I'm just about finished painting the blades, I had to completely fiberglass them. If I had to do it over again with not having heat in my shed I would have just carved new wooden blades, which I still might down the road.