Monday, August 03, 2009

More of that wonderful Friday!

Pretty much all little kids love to watch big machines work. Maya loves school buses and trucks. I am still a little kid in many ways, so when I was driving from Wayland to Naples last Friday, I noticed that some of the wind turbines of the Cohocton Wind Farm were missing their blades. On a previous visit, all the blades had been in place, so I was curious, and started counting towers with no blades. From where I was, I could see 4, along with two monster cranes on two different hills. Then I noticed a set of blades rising slowly, and captured these images. It was a quite hazy day, and I was not too close, but these are still pretty cool shots. I would imagine several days worth of hauling in the parts for the crane, assembling the parts, etc. The actual lifting of the blades into place took about 10 minutes! For scale, the height of that tower where the hub of the blades attaches is about 285 feet off the ground. Each of those 3 blades is 135 feet long. The tip of a blade travels about 850 feet for each rotation. About 1 mile for every 6 rotations.
Reminder - click pictures for a closer view!

How do you thread a needle 285 feet off the ground?

1 comment:

The Daily Rant said...

I see these all over the country, have seen them whizzing by being hauled on other trucks, but I've never seen one going up. VERY cool!