Propeller Re-Pitch
January - March 2006 - I hated to
take the plane down for this change at this time of the year because the weather
here in Phoenix is so beautiful. But I wanted to get on with testing the plane
with the propeller properly pitched for the engine. I removed the prop and sent
it back to Craig Catto to have pitch added to the blades on January 5, 2006. He
says it will take approximately 3 weeks, so I should have it back on the plane
in late January. I asked him to repaint it black with white tips this time, so
I'm really looking forward to how it turns out. I'm having to do this because I
mistakenly asked him a couple of years ago to take pitch out of the prop when I
wasn't able to develop full power on my runup. It turned out that I was
restricting airflow to the engine by an improperly sized throttle cable plate
and once that was fixed I now had a prop that would overspeed in cruise. By
adding the pitch back to the prop I should get back most, if not all, of the
lost pitch. We'll see when I fly it. I'm having to pull throttle back to 1/2
throttle now just to keep the engine under 2700 RPM. You'd like to be able to
operate wide open throttle and turn 2700 to get the most HP from the engine and
the most speed from the prop.
Well, March 16, 2006 and the prop finally shows up in the
mail - so much for getting it back in 3 weeks! A lot of events transpired to
cause it to take so long. One is the post office - they claimed I could only
send it parcel post which wasn't true but I believed them at the time. It took
nearly 2 weeks just for the prop to get to Craig one state away! Great
government service!! Then since it got to Craig later than he had hoped, he
couldn't get right on it due to other props he was working on. Finally it was
finished but then Craig fell through his patio roof and broke three ribs and
couldn't get the prop packaged up to ship it back. Well, it's back and it looks
beautiful! Here's a shot I took of it after unpacking it before putting it back
on the plane.
Last Updated on
July 12, 2008
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