Matt Swearingen's home built Alternator with the Prairie Star AL rotor.

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Information from Matt about his home built generator.

I wrecked my 1991 dodge caravan and sold the engine so I took off both front rotors and bearings. I used one bearing for the Yaw and the other one for the alternator itself.
I glued the 16 magnets to what would be the outside of the rotor if it were still on the vehicle set it on the studs it originally came off flipped the other rotor backwards and set it on the studs right up against the first rotor. Watch your fingers it's tricky I used a long 1/4 drive socket extension inserted it through the air holes of the rotor and held on to the extension when installing it.
You must mark on the second rotor where the magnets are on the first rotor so that when you glue the magnets onto the second rotor they are perfectly lined up with each other.
The tail is made up of a fence post and a piece of sheet metal from some heat duck.
The tower is a 40' Rohn 25G I acquired years ago I don't even remember where anymore the wire coming down the tower is an old power wire they used to use for mobile home hookups where they just plugged them into an outlet they've since banned that practice but for this it was a perfect piece of 6ga wire I used 3 of the wires and ran 3phase all the way into the house and then used a rectifier out of an alternator to convert to DC power for charging ran it through the Amp Meter already built into my 110v-12v charger so I had some idea what it was doing. I do not have a furling system built into this unit. I will probably kick myself later but we'll see.

I think my next project on the list is to either build or buy some type of charge controller that can just switch to a heating element of some sort. I have a little 12v heater here but I'm not sure how well it will hold up to the voltage swings when not charging. Or I need to just have it turn itself on some how when the battery's are fully charged and leave the generator hooked to the batteries all the time. I need to do some research or trial and error.
I have a bit of an electronics background which probably just makes me dangerous but I do love to build things like this it has been a blast.

I hope some of this information proves useful.
I know in building my own I used no one persons design simply because I did not have the same things here that they used but it all went a long ways in giving me the ideas to use what I had. to date I have spent out of pocket for magnets, Magnet wire in building the coils, the prop, and a couple of bucks for bolts everything else I've had here.
And to think my wife complains because I NEVER throw anything away. LOL

Talk to you later Terry

Matt Swearingen

New pictures of the Tri-Nado Extreme added 6-5-05

I wonder what that bird was thinking?

Read his brief comments

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