Hints & Tips – Stronger Prop Shafts

Do you build Peanuts, Dime Scales, Embryos and even small Scale planes? Do you select 1/32″ prop shafts and nose bearings because the wire is over 50% lighter than 3/64″ (0.047″) wire and you want to keep your planes light? Do you suffer from regularly bending prop shafts? And finally, do you need to add nose weight to your models?

If you answered “yes” to all of those questions, I ask you, “why – why do you bring this upon yourself?!?”  You can reduce the number of bent prop shaft occurrences AND reduce the amount of clay you are adding to the nose WITHOUT affecting the overall weight of your model simply by increasing the diameter of your prop shaft. Granted, the difference in weight of the prop shaft will not eliminate the need for nose weight, but why bother with the irritation of bending your prop shaft on every landing and flying with a wobbly prop?

I used to believe that a light prop shaft was a good thing, but I have changed my mind. Too often my shafts got bent and I would try to adjust them on the field. But increasing from 1/32″ shafts to 0.047″ shafts eliminated bends in all but the worst crashes in Dime and Peanut. In larger, I’ve gone up to 0.055″ or even 0.0625″ prop shafts. Almost all scale planes, and many sport planes, need nose weight, so put that dead weight to real use.

Loading

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *