THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND
(Page 5 of 10)
November/December 1973
By James B. DeKorne
That may not sound like much money, but bear in mind that the "whole system" included the batteries, which 999 times out of 1,000 were sold to a scrap dealer back in 1949 when the REA came in. Also, the generator has endured tornadoes, been struck by lightning six or seven times, and is all but rusted into one solid chunk of cast iron and copper wire. Add to that the fact that YOU are the one who has to take it down from that 45-foot tower, and the price rapidly drops to something like $20.00 or $30.00. (This for the generator alone . . . "tower included" raises the price.)
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The most I ever paid for a wind generator was $100 for a Jacobs (the best machine made) that put out 2,500 watts , was complete, with no busted parts, and—moreover—had been carefully removed from its tower in 1949 and stored ever since in a nice warm barn.
The reason I offer these price guidelines is because I'd hate to see the cost of used wind generators inflated to beyond their true value, like everything else seems to be these days. Also remember that you're going to have to put considerable time and money into making the thing work again.
On a recent trip out on the plains I managed to scrounge up seven old wind generators: four Winchargers and three Jacobs. Out of the seven, only three are complete enough to be usable. (In learning by experience I made a few mistakes and bought some junk.) I only purchased one tower, mostly because all those generators constituted an overload for my truck and trailer, and towers are readily available in my part of the country, (Any windmill stand works just fine and support for a generator can be made from an old telephone pole for very little money ... see Drawing No. 2 and Photo No. 1.)
AND ONCE YOU'VE GOT YOUR RIG . . . THEN WHAT?
So you've bought the generator—you're satisfied, the fanner's satisfied—now how do you get the blamed thing down? Believe me, unless you're a telephone lineman or a circus tightrope walker, working on top of a tower is a scary proposition. Once you've tied yourself in with a safety belt, it isn't so bad ... except when the wind starts blowing and the generator wants to move around with it! (Even with the vane turned "out of the wind" so that the tail is horizontal with the plane of the propeller, the mechanism will still want to turn when the breezes get gusty.)
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT delude yourself into thinking that the tower can be lowered safely with the generator still in place! I made this mistake on the very first machine I took down . . . and completely destroyed it (see Photo No. 2). I don't know much about some of the principles of physics, but it seems to be a law of nature that an object which weighs 400 pounds on top of a vertical tower will come to weigh more than a ton as the structure leans toward the horizontal.
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