Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

We lived off grid with a 32 volt battery system back in the 1970s-80s. I used telephone company batteries, 1680 and 840 amp hour strings plus some smaller sets. We had vacuum cleaner, waffle iron, toaster, drills, lots of motors 1/6 to 1/2 hp, radio, iron, fans, mixer, hand grinder and probably othe...

Nice machine, haven't seen one that was was complete before.

My guess is Dunlite, an Australian made machine. http://www.pearen.ca/dunlite/2kw/2507-B.pdf

Yes, Roland was quite a guy. The stories you mention are true, as far as I know. We got our first set of used phone company batteries from him and used them for years. I still have the 850 Delco engine generator that I got from him in the 1970s. His WindPower was on a 120 foot guyed tower. He was wo...

While going through old correspondence, magazines, and photos I found a couple of pictures of Wind Power 2500 watt generators that I took back in the 1970s. Some are of a generator belonging to Roland Coulson of Ankeny, IA, in 1976, and the color one is of my generator at Tomah WI around 1977 or 78,...

I found my stack of old Wind Power Digest magazines from the 1970s and 80s, and found an article about Fred Bruns. In the article it mentions a Jacobs that he installed on 4 pine trees, and there is a poor picture of it too. I'm posting a scan of the page here.

I found the magazine article that I recalled, in an issue from 1976. I'll post a page of it that I scanned, in the Wind Generator forum further down the page. It isn't a very legible picture, looks like the original was a poorly exposed snapshot, and the magazine was printed on newsprint paper.

An old issue of Wind Power Digest may have had a photo of a Jacobs on trees. I'll see if I can find the issue but if it is out in the barn it may have to wait until snow is gone, so I can get out there.

Lots of people using old 32 volt Jacobs use them at 48 volts with no problem. I'm not sure about other brands.

I have some parts for Jacobs wind generator, including a complete flyball governor with blades, and another governor in pieces with 2 broken flyballs, 3rd one is okay. If there's any interest in these things, I'll post pics and prices (if I can figure out what they might be worth).