They all do it. See them all the time. Surprised a major manufacturer could end up using such poor paint. Probably forced into it by regulations. Hopefully they got past it by now, although it seems many components are designed to fail at a certain point so you either need to buy a replacement or have it worked on.

Great except the dust from the amount of traffic on dirt roads. Otherwise, fresh, clean air and open spaces, nice weather, plenty of room up here!

Sorry to correct you, but: 1) There is no such thing as a Bergey 20 kW turbine. Their largest s a new 15 kW turbine, released a couple years ago. 2) If you read the comment below yours, it confirms the noise. Here's a link to that video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6bGaYiuh7WLrpY 3) I know all the people at Bergey, and have run and rebuilt their turbines for years, including removing the peeling leading edge tape from the blades, filling the leading edge erosion with epoxy meant for the task, and covering the repaired sections with a hard epoxy coating from the wind energy industry. 4) We keep an extra Bergey 10 KW turbine here so we can swap them out when one goes bad. 5) I've been in the wind energy industry for 20 years. 5) Everyone who runs a Bergey 10 kW turbine knows very well the peeling leading-edge tape noise issue. It is amazing how a small piece of tape at 160 MPH sounds like a freight train! 6) The turbine in the video was a replacement for one that was dropped and smashed. Unfortunately this replacement was installed wrong, with one wire not completely connected, and so the one you see burned out its generator once the wire fell away from its terminal. Consistently incompetent work by local installer - we use other service people now. But I know very well what this noise is - I fix the blades, after which they are quiet. Besides all that, Bergey is, in general, a good company, and their turbines are good products. Their new 15 kW unit is a different design, and seems to be doing well.

The problem is you have a worn bronze bushing at the upper end of your starter. That back-and-forth, side-to-side slop is what wears out your gears. The gear teeth are too far away to engage properly, so instead they get chewed up. Your starter needs a fresh upper bushing, at least from my experience. Totally fixed my problem.

@@dougselsam5393 thx for the prompt response. i have a box full of starters ill see about putting one together with the freshest bushing i can find. I watched several other bendix replace videos where i noticed no mention of the bushing so i left brief comments on them addressing the worn bushing in the cap so hopefully others can be alerted to a further repair to be made to save on more frequent time and money spent on bendix replacement. Youd figure this was more commonly diagnosed, but from my experience in buying the plastic gear in 10 packs, i can see why mention of bushing replacement is absent. Gotta make them bulk sales i guess. Oh well, glad you investigated and shared, as i was on the hunt for anything other than a replace the plastic gear remedy and wanted better reasoning for the dang thing chewing up my dollars. Saw your sky serpent crash and that looks pretty cool. ive been watching wind stuff on Robert Murry Smith channel and can imagine some of the configs hes been making up and down your shaft. they are small and light enough i wonder if they could be independent along a long ass tether setup like that feeding down the vein. his serpent coil generator is just a big ole hub that can slide down a shaft. anywho, cool stuff, the tinkerer in me wants to head out back to the junk pile and start picking. have a good one man

Don't forget, you can get a brand new bronze bushing on Ebay for like 6 bucks. I also combined used parts to fix mine, but have a brand new bushing in reserve in case the latest bushing gets worn. I could not believe how silent the starter is with a better bushing. Yes, I agree that they would rather sell you more gears, or a new starter, than a single bushing that would solve the problem. @@koaasst

Hi Seamus: The tower is 120 feet tall. That noise is normal for any of these turbines, when even a single corner of the leading edge tape comes loose. After years of dust and raindrops at 200 mph, it's quite likely some tape comes loose from the blade, and they can then get very loud. The solution is to replace the tape with a professional leading-edge protection system. OK first, this was a used turbine, stuck on my tower after the local installer dropped my original turbine that came with this house, during an attempted removal for a factory rebuild under warranty. Apparently the manufacturer had a bad batch of bearings, which may be why the original turbine had been falling apart within its 5-year warranty period. The turbine had been running unloaded for years, making a huge racket that caused a lot of neighbors to be anti-wind energy. The local installer would not come over to diagnose what was wrong with it. Once I moved here, I had to handle it. I had a friend with climbing equipment go up and find it was falling apart, by shaking a blade fore-and-aft, and noting that the entire rotor was loose. Between the bad local service and lack of support from the local installer, and erroneous tech support from the factory, the used replacement turbine in this video burned out its alternator. So that was strike-2 for Bergey, which was hard to believe, since we had all been friends for years. Turns out one of the 3 power wires was never connected to its terminal properly by the local installer when the used replacement for the original (accidentally dropped 100 feet by the local installer) turbine was installed, so that wire was just "floating" on the terminal, til a few years later, the wire fell away, resulting in "single-phasing" operation, which made a LOUD grinding generator noise, and quickly burned out the 1000 lb. alternator. According to California law, a licensed contractor remains responsible that products are installed according to manufacturer's specifications, for ten years, and this one had been installed for less than ten years when it failed, and meanwhile I had let Bergey know about the generator noise for years. They kept telling me not to worry about the noise, confusing it with a different noise that their newer turbines were making which they affectionately called "the foghorn noise". I could have pressed the issue legally, but at some point you have to take matters into your own hands and just get the job done right. I found a cheap used replacement turbine of the same model, refurbished it, and paid an out-of-town installer to swap them out. I removed the leading edge tape from the new (used) blades, and replaced it with a professional 2-layer system using epoxy putty, followed by epoxy paint, made for utility-scale turbines, and recommended by a friend in the industry. The new (used) turbine is relatively quiet now, powering this place, and making its rated output at this moment since we have a healthy wind blowing out there right now. So this is Bergey turbine number three (3) for this site, and it is only due to me babysitting the whole situation for over ten frustrating years now, that there is anything running up there at all. But Bergey turbine #3 is running well for now, and it is now much quieter than the ones with leading edge tape. All it takes is a loose corner of the leading edge tape to sound like a freight train/Huey helicopter, so I'm sure glad I moved on from being dependent on the original installer and the original turbine configuration. The manufacturer had also advised not worrying about the broken furling cable - they all break. Someone finally noticed the reason the furling cables break was the tail trying to push the cable into its sheath (you can't push a rope), so we also added 20 lbs. of lead weights to the bottom end of the furling cable, to keep tension on it, and the turbine now furls much better in high winds, and has not broken the cable - yet. Hopefully that problem is solved now too.

@@dougselsam5393 Thanks Doug for getting back to me, I really appreciate that. My brother and I are entering the advanced stages of purchasing 3 of these wind turbines in CA and then shipping them to Ireland. That said I got a bit of a shock when I stumbled on your video. We have neighbours and they would find it difficult to withstand that noise should it happen. At the very least, it's making us think twice about purchasing or not. I did a lot of research and as turbines go, the Bergey turbines are meant to be relatively reliable and quiet??? Thanks again for sharing your story Doug. Regards, Seamus

@@seamusrispin1967 Well Seamus, if you want to avoid the noise from loose leading edge tape, do what I did get rid of the leading edge tape and replace it with an epoxy system made for wind turbine blades. You first repair any leading edge damage (holes and voids) with an epoxy putty, then sand the repairs smooth, place masking tape on the outside of the same lines where the edge of the leading edge tape was, then apply an epoxy paint between the masking tape strips. I added a second layer of the paint over the first, about a half-inch wide, right on the exact leading edge, because that is the only place that really erodes. Again, use masking tape to establish straight lines. I even sprayed on some white polyurethane marine paint over the repaired leading edge and where needed to make the blades look new. So far MUCH quieter (way less noise) than even new blades with new tape.

​@@seamusrispin1967Hi Seamus, did you buy the Bergey turbines? Just came across this video and your comments, I had a Bergey Excel 10kw for nearly 10 years in the UK and had the same noise issues. I'd loads of problems dealing with Bergey and in the end replaced their turbine with a different make. Final straw for me was when they refused to honour their warranty on my alternator claiming it had had a lightning strike (it hadn't as there'd been no rain during the period it failed), alternator had failed after water ingress, they quoted me $13000 for a replacement alternator and shipping, I refused and replaced the turbine after 3 years of downtime and arguing with them. If you've bought the Bergeys already I hope they're going well for you, if not I'd say avoid Bergey if you can.

@@drewmiller7660 hi Drew in the end we didn't purchase. It turns out the shipping costs were going to be too expensive. Take care for now and Chat again soon. Regards Séamus

The one and only... :)

I've been snoozing on the serpent. Gotta get back to it! :)

Balloons OK in light winds, but tended to want to be blown down toward the ground in a strong wind.

The date of this flight was Saturday, August 11, 2018.

$400 on Craigslist

Yeah it need some creepy music right there..

How ya doin' Ken! Amazingly, it got even more windy later that day as the rain set in. Cast-iron and cast-aluminum benches, chairs, and a table were toppled or moved to new positions., and I watched a concrete roof tile shatter as it hit the ground! WIndmills OK. :)