Neal Howard
Cleared for Takeoff
Absolutely not. (caveat: there are several metal props which are "proven" and/or approved by their makers for use on E-AB aircraft such as Van's RVs, but they're not "certificated" in any way by the FAA and I would be very comfortable using one of those).
I know enough about metal props and harmonics, and the need for vibration analysis to be performed, etc. I am not your average wrench-turning owner... I'm a fair bit more educated and experienced in building and maintaining experimental aircraft than that, having been around E-AB aircraft construction projects for more than a dozen years now. I do know that history is full of experimental aircraft where the builder simply cut down and twisted a metal prop from a spamcan for what he thought would be a good diameter and pitch for his homebuilt... and ended up shucking a blade in flight, many times with fatal results. The E-AB community has learned from those lessons too, and when it comes to critical safety of flight issues, we're generally pretty serious about doing our homework.
I chose my particular prop because it's a proven design, already undergone extensive testing and a series of design/development iterations by the maker until they felt comfortable to release it, as well as this prop already giving successful results on numerous customers' airplanes despite only having been released on the market for a year or two now. It just ain't "certificated" for any airplane.... and it doesn't need to be either.
The typical "experimental" aircraft out there flying today is actually a lot less experimental , and a lot more proven, than most people think they'd be. They just don't have to go thru an extremely excessively ridiculously overburdensomely (feel free to add in a few more adjectives to further drive home the point) obtuse certification process as a certificated airplane, or any replacement components for certificated airplanes.
Last edited: