Nothing to do with proas, but thought you guys might be amused.
Just uploaded a video of a 9m cat I converted to windmill power a few
years ago. Footage was for Tomorrow's World, a BBC science show. Not
very impressive as the presenter didn't have a clue and the boat was
laden with 6 people, cameras and sound gear, but it gives an idea of
what was involved.
The cat is an Iroquois, the windmill is 9.4m dia, wood and steel
blades, driving a 1m dia prop via a 2:1 speed up gearbox. The
windmill blades were pretty good, but by the time I got to the water
prop I was running out of cash. Consequently it never reached it's
potential.
The best we got out of it was 6 knots directly into 20 knots of
breeze. This is better vmg than it made under soft sails. The
windmill was doing 110 rpm (it is doing 6 rpm in the video with the
camera on the end of the blade), whereas it was designed to peak at
180 rpm, at which speed, the boat should have been doing 13 knots,
directly into the wind.
http://www.youtube.
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe