The Big Day

January 4th, 2004. It had been above average temperatures for and damp for weeks and the weather was about to change, so it was now or never, or at least till April!

We were up bright and early and had everything ready to go by the time the turbine raising crew arrived. It was foggy and damp with no wind, a perfect day! Everyone was anxious to get it up before the weather changed, which could have been any minute!

However, we had made some miscalculations with our tower’s gin pole which was making it a lot more difficult to raise the tower than we had hoped. Our tower is seventy feet high, and we only had a twenty one foot gin pole on it. That was not nearly long enough! Each section of our tower weighed two hundred pounds and there were three sections. The turbine weighed about one hundred pounds. When you do the math, that two hundred pound gin pole was no where near enough of a lever for something that long and heavy!

Anyway, we were very determined to get it up and running that day come hell or high water! We would take it down in the spring and fix the gin pole problem then. So, with a lot of people, a lot time and a huge amount of effort, we finally got it up. It was a thing of beauty! And, as if on queue, just as we got it up and secured into place, the wind started to pick up and the blades started to turn! We ran into the house and checked the meters and sure enough, it was making power! There were a lot of yahoo’s and jumping up and down and also some sighs of relief! We spent the rest of the night, till it got dark, looking out of the kitchen window watching the turbine go! The next day, winter arrived with a vengeance as if to make up for lost time. We had gotten it up just in time!