This is a 'temporary' installation I put up quite a while ago. The 2.5m turbine sat atop a 10m high 2" galv pipe pole and powered an attached array of weather equipment as well as a computer and a wireless link (remote weather station). The temporary installation was intended to last a couple of months until I got rid of the pine trees occupying the permanent site about 200m away. About a month ago some kindly sole decided to steal the laptop that ran it (about a two kilometre walk behind a locked gate up a steep hill. Thankfully they considered the 2 x T105's a bit much to carry and pretty much left everything else alone) so I haven't been to concerned with it of late. The turbine was left shorted out but is a cheap Chineese model I have imported with a undersized alt that gets away in winds over ~20k/h even when shorted. The furling mechanism appears to be fine.
I have preached to many a folk on the necessity of securing turnbuckles after seeing a number vibrate free and usually at least tape them up as a stop gap until I wire them properly. For what ever reason I never secured the ones at this site.
We have had winds gusting over 80k/h (as measured at another similar site I have not too far away) for the last couple of days. I was working close by today so decided to check up on this site and found this:
(click images for high res)
As you can see the eye from one of the turnbuckles securing a top guy wire has vibrated free and consequently the tower has toppled. Two of the blades have broken off at the root and were found approx 30m away. Luckily I have imported a few of these turbines and have parts to fix it. All of the other equipment managed to avoid getting damaged.
So if you have unsecured turnbuckles out there, take this as a warning and get out and secure them!