Backstay Wind Generator Support

[Trim50]

We leave in September...I'm counting the days!

[Dockhead]

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus praising the very fine, very elegant, and beautifully executed fabrication. A first-class job indeed! Wow, I wish I could do that kind of work -- you are a true artist with metal.

Something tells me it is not going to be stable enough at sea. When the boat rolls around at sea, it seems to me, you're going to get some mighty strong lever moment on that stainless tube, and swinging, which will tend to rip it off -- to twist it out of its socket. The fact that the radar scanner counterbalances the wind vane will actually make things worse, when you get the whole contraption swinging around the axis of the stainless tube as the boat rolls -- the angular moment caused by the inertia of the radar scanner will be added to that of the wind vane.

But I'm not an engineer and that's just a hunch. Do let us know how it works in practice; we're rooting for you!

Advantage of your scheme is that you've got the mass of your radar scanner out of your upper rigging; also the whole mass of the structure is less than most anything else you could imagine. So if it just doesn't swing around too much, it will be a killer setup.

[Trim50]

It is pretty darn solid...however, the Sea has the ability to level the best engineered design one swell at a time.

[Dockhead]

"the Sea has the ability to level the best engineered design one swell at a time."

Beautifully said!! LOL! I hope the Sea doesn't level yours. Please let us know how it turns out.

[Trim50]

First day of Solar charging with cloudy day OutBack reads: 1.2kWh, 100Ah for the day. This is about half what I would expect for a sunny day.

[Joli]

Nice job!

[BlueSovereign]

Originally Posted by Trim50

It is pretty darn solid...however, the Sea has the ability to level the best engineered design one swell at a time.

The above aside, permit me to askg what I view as a perhaps "uninformed query":

Isn't the WG still going to throw shadows onto your solar panels, resulting in preventing the solars from max production???

[Trim50]

Every design is a compromise. The added performance of having the wind gen on centerline while on wind sailing will more than overcome other loses due to shadows on cells.