This sketch was made hurriedly for a fellow named Troy who is living “off the grid.” He has YouTube videos under the channel name The Do It Yourself World ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHAvd9oE0A-6FjM6f4J-nsg ). He is trying to figure out how to mount his wind generator 20 feet off the ground. If I heard him correctly, his plan is to mount it on a 20-foot-long pipe that is guyed to the ground.

That got me to thinking how one could get the job done. The concept of pivoting flag poles came to mind, so I made this sketch to document how it might be applied to Troy’s situation. The idea is to eliminate guy wires on a 20-foot-tall pipe and to allow one person to raise and lower the generator at will. The system consists of two 10-foot pipes (or 2x4s) anchored in the ground, a pivoting rod connecting them near the top, and a 20-foot pipe between the other two poles, affixed to the pivoting rod and secured in a vertical position with a bolt or other fastening system at its bottom end.

Assuming the wind generator is connected to the top end of the 20-foott pipe so it cannot fall off (is that even possible?) and a rope is affixed to the other end of the pipe, one can pull on the rope to raise the generator skyward, see-saw-style. Lowering is accomplished by removing the bottom fastener and letting rope out. The rope could have a fixed loop at a pre-determined length to hook onto the poles, preventing the generator from getting too close to the ground. This would allow for a one-person operation.

The challenges are digging the holes for the two supporting pipes or timbers, fabricating a pivoting system, and figuring out how to secure the generator to the top end of the pipe without hampering its need to pivot to catch the wind. If digging three or four feet is impractical, maybe the two support pipes could be anchored to the ground by a more modest arrangement, supplemented by guy wires (at least they would not have to be fastened 20 feet off the ground)

I have not made such a thing and don’t know how feasible it is at his site. This idea is offered merely in the spirit of helping out. Good luck, Troy!