And that's a fail

Today the wind blew and quite a strong series of gusts. They did move my turbine blades and proved one thing. The design is a total failure.

Now, taking that design failure apart, let's see what failed and why. From observing the motion of the turbine and from spinning the blades rapidly by hand I can conclude the following:

1. Spinning the blades rapidly by hand I did get enough power for my LED so the generator probably does indeed reach 12v.
2. The blades need to spin far more rapidly than that in order to make viable electricity.
3. The blades are probably at 2.5 gallons each a bit on the small side. A second set of blades would definitely be an advantage.
4. With the existing space taken up by the turbine plus any extra space, it is not a viable option for a motorhome.

Where does all that leave me? It leaves me with a very promising little generator that clearly needs more than just bigger blades. In all honesty I think a small model aeroplane engine would run that generator just fine. The only downside with that is such engines are somewhat costly.

As I sit, typing, the turbine is indeed turning occasionally. Bigger blades would help a lot but as I have already said, for a motorhome, it's not feasible to carry such big blades given that the power generated will be so low. It would be more beneficial to have this as a tiny generator running from a small model aircraft engine. Sadly, those seem to be quite expensive - more so than the cost of the cheapest Harbor Freight generator.

In conclusion, it's a $15 Chinese generator that has way too much internal resistance from the gears for it to be remotely worth using. It's not worthless junk but it's pretty unusable unless used as a water turbine. Then it might have some promise.