I don't know how many twists it could accommodate before it became a problem. I might guess a couple dozen or more, but what would be a problem long before it pulled anything apart in our case is that there would be too much restriction on the Dyneema pull line. The actuator control does have a "retreat" safety feature. It does a speed check after reading the actuator position. It will retract a small amount, then do another speed check. If the arm is being restricted by something it will stop and extend to the max pre-set. To my knowledge this has never happened.
Taking Dan's Coriolis, full moon scenario to extreme - and we always consider worst case - let's say it is neglected, and the thing twists into an ever tightening ball. Eventually the cord gets pulled such that something pulls apart, most likely at one end. Electrically we have either a short, and the rotor brakes, or an open and the rotor runs unloaded. Not desirable in either case, but the furling is still mechanically operational. There is nothing related to this design feature, or the failure scenario that would result in the tail being held in an unfurled position. In some ways it is no worse than having your load diversion, and/or clipping circuit fail. Eventually the batteries are full and we run unloaded. There'd be lots of cyclic furling and unfurling, but we should survive it (at least for awhile).
The flip-side is that the line could be restricted in the furled position due to a failure in the control circuit, or the actuator, but this only means it doesn't open when you want it to start until the condition is corrected.
The principle design I don't claim as original, it has been proven on countless earlier designs such as Quirks, Dunlite, Sencenbaugh and early water-pumper mills which used mechanical furling as a protection measure. Ours has been working for us since 2013 with the manual winch; since 2017 with the actuator added (perhaps an original enhancement?). Overall, it's been very reliable, and IMO pretty easy to maintain.
And a minor footnote... isn't the Coriolis effect/force kind of like "apparent" power, something perceived, but not "real", or am I remembering this wrong? Maybe not a good analogy because apparent power can be measured, right, but Coriolis I had thought was fictitious, or at least not conclusively proven? I may have to Google this one, but I'm betting the pilots here will know...
