Your Questions About Windmills

admin answers:

I don’t know the book, but it certainly sounds like a parody of Don Quixote. “Tilting” was a medieval sport, a kind of jousting, in which two knights rode at each other with their lances and tried to knock each other off their horses. Don Quixote does this at windmills, which he mistakes for giants. The expression has come to mean making an issue of something not worth it or combatting an imaginary opponent.

admin answers:

[1] I suggest that you should try to seek helpful information from the Dutch Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum) in Amsterdam. See link [1] below for a description and the museum’s contact details.

[2] I have come across one novel, “The Winged Watchman”, with a similar story-line to the one that you describe in your question. Go to link [2] below to read more about this novel. It is set in a Dutch windmill in WW2.

[3] A semi-factual movie that you might be able to rent or buy is “One of our aircraft is missing” (see link 3 below). It is about a British bomber crew, rescued by the Dutch resistance after they bail out from their critically damaged aircraft. Windmills feature prominently.

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I have not been able to find any trace online of a documentary or other record in which windmills were particularly selected by the Dutch resistance as hideouts.

In some ways, they would have been good for that purpose: a high observation point from which to see approaching enemy troops, allowing time to warn any resistance members hiding in the mill; and the perfect place to set up radio antennae to send and receive signals. But, to set against those advantages, the windmills (apparently there were about 3,000 in the Netherlands at the beginning of WW2) were so obviously prominent, that they would draw Nazi troops toward them like magnets.

admin answers:

No i’ve got th same problem i can do a bunch of complicated breakdancing but I can never seem to get past doing one revolutionn of a windmill

admin answers:

Wind Mill. It was designed to mill grain. Their common in the Netherlands.

admin answers:

Three wings cost more to fab but provide a smoother rotation with less vibration than two. Smaller and cheaper windmills will use and get by with two blades. Larger and better windmills will use three.

As a blade rotates it will come into alignment with the staff/pole. The pole tends to block the path of the wind and causes the blade to generate less force when it is aligned with the pole. Once the blade moves away from teh pole the normal wind force is reapplied.

This loading and unloading of force happens quickly for each blade as it comes into alignment. For that brief instance during alignment the total force of the blades become unbalanced and will cause a vibration and rapid change in loading on the bearings at the hub.

Two blades generate more vibration than three blades. Because with three blades the 120 degree seperation allows the forces to be spread out to either side of the pole and not just at the top. A two blade unit has all of the force change applied vertically at the top (opposite the lower blade)

The size of the windmill and number of blades will determine the sizing of the bearings. A cheaper unit can be made using two blades if the bearings can take the stress but there will be more vibration and noise generated than if three blades are used. At some point on a larger windmill design three baldes will be used as the cost of the extra blade will be less than the cost of larger bearings.

admin answers:

Most are water pumps. They bring up water from underground aquifers, (water bearing rocks). Mallorca is mainly limestone so rainwater has seeped underground over centuries
Some are grain mills. There are no reliable rivers in Mallorca for water mills so wind power is the only alternative.