Mama gets a brand-new prop!

Today we drove over to Catto's shop and my copilot (and wife) Julia bought me a brand-new prop. It was great to see the shop in action and talk with Craig. We got home midafternoon, installed the new prop, and I took it around the patch for a couple TnGs. Very nice, smooth, gets me off the ground better than the old Sensenich and looks good too! More testing to come this weekend!



Cheers,
Greg

Sweet!!!!!!!

Wow! After I wear my prop Craig build me new one with NLE.

She looks good Greg!

I look forward to reading about your performance numbers. Maybe it is time I cave and put a triple on mine.

Hey Greg

Looks really good!! Im going to have to send mine back for the leading edge stainless steal option one of these days.

Nice looking color scheme!

Very interested in your experience with the new prop. I'm looking for a prop for my -9A and need to talk to Catto. If you don't mind, what is the sticker price on something like that?

Very slick on the paint scheme. I thought Craig always did the props in a base color of white, with just colored tips. Going to have to remember that down the road...

Bruce, while I don't see it on Craig's list, I seem to remember reading somewhere in the past that a 3-blader for a -320 was around $2200-ish. I'm waiting with baited breath and a drooling mouth for Greg to chime back in.

Hey, stop messing with the guy so he can get mine out the door!

Greg, that's GORGEOUS! It looks like exactly what I'm going to get from Catto, right down to the color scheme. I hope to be ordering mine in the next few months. I spoke to Craig recently, and when you can get a prop like this for about the same price as a Sensenich, it's a no-brainer, in my opinion.

I'll be anxious, too, to see your numbers! I do have one question... did you get the spinner from him, too?

Sweet

If you ever decide to leave Julia, give me a call

Best,

Or if she would like to adopt a 61 year old child let me know.

Prop

I have sent Catto 3 emails over the last 2 weeks , wanting to order a prop and info on a spinner , no response ! Looking at other options .

FYI: a 3 blade for an IO-360 with nickel leading edges, and a new spinner that has already been cut with shipping is $3250. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the info. Looking for better service.

g zero said:

I have sent Catto 3 emails over the last 2 weeks , wanting to order a prop and info on a spinner , no response ! Looking at other options .

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Call him rather than email. It's a better way to get a response.

What flyguytiki said on price. $3450 with painted spinner out the door.

Craig can do any base colors, so you're not restricted to white.

Will post test numbers when I get them.

Julia already has more expensive kids (me) than she probably needs.

Greg

Looks nice Greg, that is going to be the prop for my project.

Performance update

I got into the air this afternoon for about an hour. Top speed at 8500 DA was ~195 mph TAS (varied a bit from 193-197), and 2680-2690 RPM. This was WOT and was NOT a scientific study, just what I observed on the gauge. Went down to 5500 DA and saw virtually the same numbers. Once I put on the upper intersection fairings (left them off for a couple reasons and have about 3" of exposed gear leg) I might pick up a bit more. So about the same speed as with the Sensenich, but at slightly lower RPM (I was seeing right on 200 mph at 2750 rpm with the Sensenich during my original testing). MUCH smoother running with the new prop.

I did one climb test from about 4500 to 8500 feet and was seeing ~1400 fpm on average (it bounced around quite a bit) at Vy (~92 mph in my airplane). This is behind the power curve, running about 2200-2250 rpm (I didn't make note of the exact rpm). Subjective feeling is that the airplane cruise climbs better than with the Sensenich by a bit, if I keep it above ~2400 rpm.

Takeoff performance was similar to the Sensenich, though I got off the ground a bit quicker. Again, perhaps because of being behind the power curve taking off at 6000 DA. Doing TnGs, it definitely accelerated faster than the Sensenich, since I was starting at ~40 mph rather than from a standstill.

The biggest surprise to me was the landings. I have never had an issue with landing the RV in a reasonable amount of runway, but now I understand what people say about the 9 floating forever. It seemed to me that it was difficult to get it to go down with this new prop. Maybe different braking tendencies with the Catto/3-blade vs. aluminum 2-blade? I have to temper this remark with the fact that I have also been playing with my idle settings, and it may have been idling a bit higher than normal, thus possibly lengthening my glide on final. I'll be doing additional testing on this tomorrow.

Cheers,
Greg

Sure it pretty Greg! Nice!

CG Shift?

Greg Arehart said:

The biggest surprise to me was the landings.

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The Catto weighs considerably less than the Sensi, yes? I'm curious if you did any compensation for that, and if not, perhaps that's contributing to the different feel at touchdown? I know my nose-light -6 feels quite different as the CG shifts to the rear... and it does feel like it wants to float a lot further in my usual landing configuration. I can't fully grasp the science of that, or whether it's even possible... but that's how it feels!

-jon

Greg Arehart said:

The biggest surprise to me was the landings. I have never had an issue with landing the RV in a reasonable amount of runway, but now I understand what people say about the 9 floating forever. It seemed to me that it was difficult to get it to go down with this new prop. Maybe different braking tendencies with the Catto/3-blade vs. aluminum 2-blade? I have to temper this remark with the fact that I have also been playing with my idle settings, and it may have been idling a bit higher than normal, thus possibly lengthening my glide on final. I'll be doing additional testing on this tomorrow.

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I noticed a little more float when I switched from a metal Sensenich to Catto, meaning I could approach a couple MPH slower. Not sure if it's a drag issue or just the fact that you must set the idle a little higher due to the drastically reduced flywheel effect.

And BTW, I learned that it's not simply a consistent ground idle speed that you need to take into account when changing from a metal to a wood/composite prop. When I put my new Catto on, ground idle seemed fine, but a few days later the engine quit cold and the prop went deadstick during an inverted spin. I increased the idle slightly even though it idled on the ground just fine. Fine since. Something to keep in mind if you're doing spins. I would suggest being over a runway when first doing power-off stall/spin practice with the new prop until you know your idle is set correctly. There's not a lot of forward airflow through the prop during a fully-developed spin, and the lack of flywheel effect can really show.

Greg Arehart said:

I got into the air this afternoon for about an hour. Top speed at 8500 DA was ~195 mph TAS (varied a bit from 193-197), and 2680-2690 RPM. This was WOT and was NOT a scientific study, just what I observed on the gauge. . .

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In case anyone may be interested in some comparison numbers for the Catto prop, I have been talking with Craig about my 3-blade prop on my 9A lately. I have been concerned about whether I am getting all the speed out of my prop setup. My thoughts have been that perhaps I may need a different pitch on my setup. I have a 3-blade 68x72 Catto with the older tape leading edge. This is spinning behind the ECi IO-340, ECi forward facing cold air induction, one mag, one Lightspeed Plasma III EI, 4 straight pipe Vetterman exhaust.

Yesterday coming back from LOE was such a nice day I decided to do a little more flying than just following the GPS magenta line straight home so I did a 3 direction GPS speed test at 8K density altitude (interestingly enough 8K DA was exactly at 8K indicated yesterday morning). Plugging the numbers in to this True Airspeed Calculator. I showed 187.919 MPH spinning at 2750 RPM! (And yes, I am aware of the 9A Vne of 210 MPH. Just to be clear the air was silky smooth during this test. The most beautiful flying day I can remember for a long time) I am going to verify this a time or two more to make sure this is accurate.

Ok, did some recalculations and found an error in my 360 deg speed number. It turns out there was a stronger North wind than I had initially recorded and I had input an incorrect speed flying the 360 direction. I have made the change to my TAS number above. More in line with what I have been seeing on previous tests and not as good as I had initially thought.