{"id":3403,"date":"2018-11-01T12:52:49","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T16:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/blog\/?p=3403"},"modified":"2018-11-01T12:52:49","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T16:52:49","slug":"puzzled-by-props","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/puzzled-by-props\/","title":{"rendered":"Puzzled by Props?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more I play this game, the less I think I know!\u00a0 Here’s what I do know.\u00a0 For small planes, like Peanuts, we want to keep the plane light.\u00a0 And for any plane there is a best-fit prop and rubber combination.<\/p>\n

For my Peanut Bellanca Aries T-250, prop selection was (naturally) part of the process.\u00a0 But since taking over Superior Props in 2013, I have been using wooden props almost exclusively – and it is not just a marketing ploy.\u00a0 I think they perform better – and they generally weigh less.\u00a0 Weighing less fits right in with the “keep your Peanuts light” mantra.<\/p>\n

I started out with a 5.5″ Stacked prop.\u00a0 This came out somewhere near 1 gram.\u00a0 The bare prop weighed 0.8 grams, and I added tubing bushings and a Garami clutch, so the finished weight is about 1 gram.\u00a0 1 gram is a great (light) weight and I am completely satisfied with that.<\/p>\n

But I also mounted it on a Gizmo Geezer nose button.\u00a0 These weigh about 1.2 grams.\u00a0 In order to get the model balanced (with rubber) at the proper CG location, I needed to add about 1 gram of tail weight.\u00a0 The all-up weight of the plane (without rubber) came out to 9 grams.\u00a0 That is not bad for a Peanut and the g\/sq.in. worked out to be 0.28 – which is pretty good wing-loading for a Peanut (or any scale model).<\/p>\n

But those extra 2+ grams (1.2g GG Nose and 1g tail weight bothered me.\u00a0 So I decided to try a different prop (and nose button).\u00a0 Recently George Nunez showed a “can” prop he made and it looked great (and performed well, too).\u00a0 I have made these before and decided to try my hand at making a light prop with these materials.<\/p>\n

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my 5.5″-6″ “can” prop template. I will keep this and just slip a different cup on the outside and trace the blades on the new cup.<\/p><\/div>\n

I used some cups from Walmart and while I thought the material would be thin, it seems to be just fine.\u00a0 I made up two blades, cemented on toothpick shafts, made a 1\/4″ square prop hub, installed tubing and a Nason Clutch – and it came out about 1 gram (about the same as my stacked prop).\u00a0 I made up a plug to replace the GG button and used a small Peck button.\u00a0 The comparison of the assemblies showed that I saved 1 gram and testing showed that I could remove the tail weight – that’s 2 grams saved!\u00a0 My model before rubber is now ~7 grams.\u00a0 That’s a 22% weight savings.<\/p>\n

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the different in weight is the difference between the wood\/Peck nose button and the Gizmo Geezer nose button.<\/p><\/div>\n

That got me thinking about plastic props, so I assembled a handful of 6″ and 5.5″ plastic props and weighed them all.\u00a0 Here are the results.\u00a0 The big surprise to me was the (randomly selected) North Pacific prop is just as heavy as the SIG reproduction.\u00a0 It was no surprise that all of the plastic were at least twice as heavy as wood – I’ve seen that consistently since I converted to wood – pretty much regardless of diameter.<\/p>\n

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Of course, matching rubber to any prop is another mystery and it is dependent on a myriad of things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more I play this game, the less I think I know!\u00a0 Here’s what I do know.\u00a0 For small planes, like Peanuts, we want to keep the plane light.\u00a0 And for any plane there is a best-fit prop and rubber … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-builds","category-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}