A few sleepless nights and a beers later, it occured to me that if I could slow down or stop the wind somehow as it passed by the exit area, the vacuum would not occur.
The solution seemed to be to put some obstructions in the way of the wind at the exit area. I was thinking one step ahead when this occured to me. I figured that if I somehow stopped the air, that the reverse affect would happen... that there might be a pressure increase as the air was stopped and a reverse thing might happen... the globe would be pressurized from the top.
I made of some "wind stops" and installed them to a new baffle. I did a bit of cutting and bending of the "wind stops" to also make a little air-blocking surface on either side of the "wind stop" to make the stopped air not want to go into the baffle opening, but rather go in the other direction. I was able to cut and bend things up so that there was amn air block on both sides of the wind stops, affording protection in both possible wind directions.
The wind stops made it impossible to simply slide that baffle over the top of the existing dome, so a brass screw was soldered over a hole to one end of the baffle. A matching hole on the other end accepts a socket head screw to hold it together after it is wrapped around the dome.
Being soft and also solderable, the copper was easy to work with. IN fact, I did my cutting with an X-Acto knife. It also matches the copper tank and doesn't look too bad from a few feet away. I may paint the wind blocks green to hide them a bit when the weather warms up.
I havn't actually been able to test out the limits of the new baffle because I havn't found a wind strong enough to kill the flame yet. It has seen winds up close to 40 MPH so far and has yet to go out. About the only thing that happens on a windy night is that the globe seems to soot up faster than in calm weather.
When the wind blows, I think there now is a bit of a positive pressure in the globe. During 35+MPH winds the flame shrinks in size a bit instead of getting longer. Some tuning is possible. Either my air-blocking tabs need to get bigger or my wind blocks maybe could use a bit of trimming.
Right now I an enjoying the flame and I'll save that for a later, warmer day.
Rick
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