"Dr. Gary Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The rotor of the generator in CLearwater must be at least 30 > feet tall. > > It would turn slowly in low wind. I never tried to find out > who oned it or how much power it generated. But it was > certainly quite.
That was the windmill on the St. Petersburg Times building in Clearwater. It was a 3 stage, 3 blade eggbeater. That windmill was problematic. They never ran it for more than a few hours without it breaking down. The shaft was so long and generated so much tortional vibration that it ate up transmissions. Whoever engineered it just didn't think about tortional vibration. If the builders had put a viscous coupling between that long central shaft and the main transmission it would have lost some of its efficiency, but it would not have been breaking gears either. Unfortunately, the last time I saw it the rotor had been permanently locked in place, and the whole thing was nothing more than a piece of modern art. A monument to a good idea underengineered. -- Aviation is more than a hobby. It is more than a job. It is more than a career. Aviation is a way of life. A second language for the world: www.esperanto.org Processor cycles are a terrible thing to waste. www.distributed.net Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
