Yesterday I finished disconnecting everything from the engine, and pulled it off the aircraft. I placed the bottom of the crate on top of the engine hoist legs, and carefully lowered the engine and bolted it in place.


The poor aircraft looks pretty sad without an engine.


This morning I secured the crate sides in place, then hooked the hoist back up to the engine, and lifted the engine and crate high enough to get them in the back of a borrowed pickup truck. I delivered the crate to the shipping company after lunch. I’ve no idea how long it will take to get to Aerosport Power.


I ordered a new 3-bladed MT MTV-12-B-C/C183-59B counterweighted prop. This prop will go to coarse pitch if the engine has an oil pressure interruption. Earlier variants of the 3-bladed MT prop were reported to provide much lower performance than Hartzell propellors on RVs. But, the newer 183-59B blade appears to me much improved, and I expect that it will provide roughly equal performance to the Hartzell prop that I was previously using. The newer “blended airfoil” Hartzell props probably offer better performance than the newest MT props, but those Hartzell props are not available with counterweighted blades. If I wanted to purchase a Hartzell with counterweighted blades, I would have to purchase the same older 7666 blade design as my current prop. I considered purchasing one of those, but the spinner would be too large, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with the major cowling modifications that would be required.

I also need to purchase a new propellor governor, as the one I currently have sends oil pressure to the prop to force it to coarse pitch, and the new prop needs oil pressure to send it to fine pitch. I’ll almost certainly purchase a PCU5000 prop governor, as it seems to be the best of the currently manufactured ones. I’ll probably participate in the group buy that has just started on the VAF WWW site.