Dave,
I came to this one a bit late, but just like to similarly commend you on a great looking build, and interesting post. Lots of work summaraized in just a few pixals. Thanks for sharing it.
It looks as though they (the blades) all rotate in unison, so independent of an individual spring failure you still in good shape. It is all very, very nice.
I tend to overbuild. A little.
Well, IMO that has to be part of the arsenal to combat Murphy. Someone early in the post mentioned a Dunlite unit. I worked on a few with Neilho years back. Always thought it was a pretty good design in concept. The gearbox, alternator & fly-ball governor was huge and well overbuilt one could say for a 2 kW machine. But, as I recall they skimped in a couple key points, like blades, which suffered from fatigue, the tail connection which regularly broken (and frequently accellerated the failure date of the blades).
Thanks too, to Max for contributions. A similar theme for you and midwoud, huh?
Best of luck, and do update as/when you can. Kind regards,
~kitestrings