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