Retrospectively obvious warning for Aerogen 6 owners

[GILow]

Bit of a mea culpa moment here, but I will share my experience so that others do not make the same mistake.

We have an Aerogen 6. It clearly states in the owners manual that it is not suited to unattended operation. It states this in a number of places in a number of ways.

Despite this, I decided to ignore the advice and shorted the outputs to give me electrical braking. I did this because tying it off had produced a flat spot on the front bearing, admittedly this took a number of years, and the bearing only cost a few dollars... but I didn't want it to happen again.

Anyway, we had a bit of "weather" recently. Hardly impressive by some people's standards, but gusting to 40 knots in the pens.

The generator produced enough power to overheat the brush block on the swivel mount and melted the entire assembly. By the time I got down to the club the next day the generator was freewheeling at incredible speed.

Thankfully the only apparent damage has been to the brush block and the replacements have been ordered, but at $AU75 it's a bit of a reminder that the people who wrote the instructions probably knew what they were doing.

Don't make my mistake, do follow the instructions.

Matt

[hpeer]

Thanks