Our mini flyin in at Dietz Airpark Oregon went well.
Philip Groelz and Steve BeckHam are restoring this old
Power Sport prop dyno. Steve is building an RV3 air racer
with long range tanks for the EAA 500 mile air race.

Sitting around brain storming I had the idea of starting
a Wankel air race team and selling t-shirts to raise funds.
Steve also has a large house with spare bedrooms and
needs some expert help tig welding and machining.
Steve has some nice machine tools and a large shop
in a beautiful sitting on a private air strip.

Paul Lamar

Steve,

Just to confirm. Your club prop can only test at one load correct? If
you fly with a C/S prop isn't it better to test with different loads,
rpms and MAPs?

Doug in Japan

Two loads :)

Paul Lamar

The dyno came with a 32 inch diameter plywood disc which Everett and Steve
mounted on the protective cage to reduce inflow and test the engine under
different load conditions.

Philip


Hey that is a good idea. I saw that disk on these two pictures and
it never dawned on me what it's function was. Cheaper than making
a bunch of different size clubs or using a variable pitch prop.
Those guys are/were geniuses.

Paul Lamar



Like other readers (I supose), I understand the intent of the
plywood disk. I have a safety concern: Will it hold together
at the RPMs at which the engine can spin it? I have never seen
any data where plywood has been tested to hold together as a
spinning disk at propeller speeds.  If I were doing this, I
would have several emergency cut-off switches around the area
for anyone to press at the first hint of trouble, and certainly
would not allow anyone to stand in the geometric plane of the disk.
But overall, I hope the test setup works.



Mike

The plywood does not spin Mike.  It is bolted to the shroud.
It just blocks air trying to flow into the prop center.

Paul Lamar

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