"Geoff Schultz" wrote in message in another
very old thread titled Wind Gen, for those now interested in seeing what was
said before, now renamed to bring it to current:

Why would I want a D400 vs a SuperWind? To me it looks like the output
of the D400 is at least 20% lower than the Superwind at normal wind
speeds. Sure I see that at above ~30 kts the D400 is better, but that's
an anomoly.


heh. I wasn't suggesting you would. Just being the devil's advocate,
having a very high level of satisfaction with our KISS, YMMV. For that
matter, the KISS does better with relatively higher winds (than, say, 7-15
knots, but not above 25 on a sustained basis, though that's easily managed
by cocking a bit with the tether), too, though I noted that most of the
reviewed items didn't really start putting out until similar winds (above
about 10 knots). I know that one wind gen type, don't know the name, shuts
down in even moderate breezes (cycles a lot), and, according to one owner,
only can deliver about 4A. If true, then that's a gen for very light wind
conditions. These have downturned slotted tails, black 3-blade props. They
also have the most godawful howl...

As to the superwind, I'm intrigued about the feathering, as it seems the
path of a presumed keyway must be snake-ish, cuz it wants near feathering to
start up, then much lower pitch to generate rotation, and back to near
feathered in very high winds. I'm reminded of the toy helicopters one
pulled a string to launch; the blades had a high pitch on high rotation, and
then nearly flat to allow slow descent as the blades slowed. Some sort of
spring or hydraulic must be involved, but my looking into their material
didn't disclose how they did it. Still, it appeals to the engineer side of
me, along with my model airplane experiences. However...

It seemed like the discussion was about noise, and my contact made reference
to a harborwide tour of many different types, saying that this was by far
the quietest. Of course, that was subjective, as I don't expect they took a
dB meter with them, and, as the review commented, in high winds, you have
the inherent wind noise to contend with as well, obfuscating the realities
of the gen itself.

The PS review was pretty recent. I wonder if the D400 is relatively new?

L8R

Skip, still on a 5-miles-away site, still able to do VoIP over our WiFi,
which we love :{))

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