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Fixing windmills

sandhiller

Just sloggin' through life
Full Member
Minuteman
Mar 30, 2008
477
2,833
64
Nebraska
The bullshit of the world sure seems far away from up here.

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Wish the problems were as easy to fix as this tailbone
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There is a feller over west of you, on 71 between Scottsbluff and Chadron with a lot of em.

He might know a thing or two if you have questions or need parts.
Kinda famous with the 7 in a circle. Looks like he has a start with 3-4 on another arrangment.

Was pretty sure when I saw you were the OP, and glad this wasnt about those useless piece of crap commie windmills.
 
There is a feller over west of you, on 71 between Scottsbluff and Chadron with a lot of em.

He might know a thing or two if you have questions or need parts.
Kinda famous with the 7 in a circle. Looks like he has a start with 3-4 on another arrangment.

Was pretty sure when I saw you were the OP, and glad this wasnt about those useless piece of crap commie windmills.
Yeah, we have managed to keep the wind turbine farm scam out of Cherry Co, but it is an ongoing battle.

The pushers make the sleaziest of used camel salesmen (a class generally populated by politicians) look like the Pope.

We have the land and they want it, been going on since the beginning of time.
 
Years ago I went to a knap-in near Stuart, Nebraska. A short drive away to the west, at Long Pine, is a deep natural drainage that goes into the Niobrara river. South of 20 it goes down into a ravine where people have vacation homes.

In prehistoric times, it would have been an ideal place to camp, summer or winter... he showed me the exact spot where he found a cache of 101 stone paleo points. The points were all very large pre-forms, spear points, knives, etc. Worth a fortune...

That country is amazingly beautiful. The knap-in host dug a small one gallon hole in his yard, and it filled up with ground water almost immediately because of the Ogalalla Aquifer.

Since I am from the midwest, I have never been in a more foreign-looking place: no trees.
 
Please educate yourself on the subject if you are going to cry about something that you don't agree with .

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I knew exactly what @powdahound76 was talkin about.

When you have to copy and paste from a google search, makes me think you aren't as familiar with both kinds as we are.
 
Please educate yourself on the subject if you are going to cry about something that you don't agree with .

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What a retarded sheep you are… some windmills in the Nederland's older as this country where converted to power generators.

Of course, your ever changing “dei education system“ doesn’t know this.
 
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NE 2 through the Sandhills is one of my favorite drives, a big reason being the hundreds of still functioning windmills out there. I have a lot of time out there working on the tracks; always peaceful, always friendly folks. I know the OP is a bit north of there, but when you're in that region it's all pretty similar.

Just don't try it in the snow, it gets absolutely brutal.

The wife wants a windmill on our land, purely for decorative reasons because I'll be damned if I'm drilling another 400+ ft deep well for a couple critters. I might dip my hand into that venture next summer, I'd like to just sit on the porch with a cool drink and watch it turn in the wind. There's some kits out there to fashion one up, but those heads wouldn't survive Wyoming.
 
A guy a couple miles out of town just had his windmill brought up to working order. Ill check with him to see where he got the parts. I watched a show on PBS about a company in Lincoln that still handles new parts for windmills. Just cant remember....getting old.
 
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NE 2 through the Sandhills is one of my favorite drives, a big reason being the hundreds of still functioning windmills out there. I have a lot of time out there working on the tracks; always peaceful, always friendly folks. I know the OP is a bit north of there, but when you're in that region it's all pretty similar.

Just don't try it in the snow, it gets absolutely brutal.

The wife wants a windmill on our land, purely for decorative reasons because I'll be damned if I'm drilling another 400+ ft deep well for a couple critters. I might dip my hand into that venture next summer, I'd like to just sit on the porch with a cool drink and watch it turn in the wind. There's some kits out there to fashion one up, but those heads wouldn't survive Wyoming.
We have a 'decorative' one here, mounted on one of our decks. Over the past decade or so, we've had quite a few compliments on it. I won't deny that I've thought a time-or-two about making it "do something" as opposed to just 'spin'.

But, there have always been far importanter jobs to get done in our short allotted time.
 
I used to live there as a kid, along the Niobrara River, we owned a mile and half of river frontage. Ran cattle and irrigated crops out of the river.
Ancestors, settled there in 1879, a few miles up river from the Ponca Reservation.
Back when kids drove tractors and trucks, long before they were 16 yrs old.
Every kid had access to unlocked guns.
And working all day, for no pay, was normal.
There were no hunting or fishing seasons,..do that whenever Dad gave you permission.
No law ever came around...didn’t need any.
Saw a county Sheriff deputy once in 10 yrs, driving around....no strangers came down those long gravel roads.
Don't live there anymore, just some find memories of me and my older brother playing in the Niobrara River whenever we got free time in the summer.
Here is a catfish caught out of the Niobrara in the 1950s.
But I still like open spaces..now there mountains, and canyons.
Fixing windmills...in solitude.
 

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A fair piece west of where you grew up, and south of the Rosebud rez, but here is looking out my office window at the same river you grew up on
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For the most part it is still the same as you remember growing up. Good place to raise kids the right way.

Riches are not only measured in money in the bank or toys in the garage.
 
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NE 2 through the Sandhills is one of my favorite drives, a big reason being the hundreds of still functioning windmills out there. I have a lot of time out there working on the tracks; always peaceful, always friendly folks. I know the OP is a bit north of there, but when you're in that region it's all pretty similar.

Just don't try it in the snow, it gets absolutely brutal.

The wife wants a windmill on our land, purely for decorative reasons because I'll be damned if I'm drilling another 400+ ft deep well for a couple critters. I might dip my hand into that venture next summer, I'd like to just sit on the porch with a cool drink and watch it turn in the wind. There's some kits out there to fashion one up, but those heads wouldn't survive Wyoming.
Find you a used aero motor mill.
I took down a 10ft mill 40ft tall a few years ago and have it here for me to repair paint and stand back up.
I'm not going to drill a well, but set it over a pond I'll make. The wind will drive the mill and it will pump water from the pond, fill the tank and flow back to the pond. I think the kids will love it
 
Find you a used aero motor mill.
I took down a 10ft mill 40ft tall a few years ago and have it here for me to repair paint and stand back up.
I'm not going to drill a well, but set it over a pond I'll make. The wind will drive the mill and it will pump water from the pond, fill the tank and flow back to the pond. I think the kids will love it
Most of the used Aeros are way bigger (and more expensive) than I want to deal with. I’m more thinking about hitting the junkyards, finding a nice sized cooling fan from a Mack or Peterbilt and cobbling a homemade one together that way. A 3ft diameter blade is about the max size I want to attempt.
 
I still remember visiting my great grandfather's farm in Mississippi. Had a working windmill that pumped water from a well into an elevated tank. When the water started overflowing the tank the adults heard the splash and sent us kids out to disengage the windmill. When water got low in the tank, reengage and pump till it was full. Nothing automatic about it.