Sorry to hear about your prop incident, a local builder had that happen to him twice, on a constant speed prop ($$) so he put his ignition key on the tow bar extension pin, so that if the tow bar was being used, he could not start the plane.
Bill Schertz
KIS Cruiser # 4045
----- Original Message ----- From: "sboese" <sboese@uwyo.edu>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 4:01 PM
Subject: [FlyRotary] trimmed prop


On Wednesday of last week I made my first XC flight with my 13B powered
RV6A.  The flight was from Laramie, WY, to Benson, MN, with a distance
covered of 507 nm.  It took 4hr 15 min non stop using 30.4 gal of fuel
leaving 7.6 gal reserve.  We started at an initial gross wt of 1796 lb and
cg of 73.2 in. That was my first excursion to density altitudes less than
7000 ft.  It was really fun to see climb rates over 1000 fpm with 1700 lb
gross wt at 3200 ft density altitude and to feel the increased acceleration
on take off.  Static rpm at 3200 ft density altitude was 4870 with 27 in MAP
and showing 11.1 gal/hr fuel consumption rate.  That makes me think I could
use a prop with less pitch.  My extrapolation of the mixture table for the
EC2 with the snubbers installed worked very well with the higher manifold
pressures that had not been tried previously with my setup.  That was good
news.

The bad news is what happens when I forget to remove the tow bar and feed it
to the propeller (see attached photo).  No injuries or other damage occurred
as far as has been determined at this point.  The 12 hour drive back home
yesterday gave me plenty of time to reflect on my stupidity.  I concluded
that my "experiment" was probably not the best way to investigate the effect
of a smaller prop.  Needless to say, if someone has upgraded to the 2.85
drive and has a prop for a 2.17 drive for sale, I would be interested to
know about that.

Sheepishly,

Steve Boese