Waterfowl Birth Control

[Rex]

I've been playing with manual prop pitch, trying to eek outa bit more speed, but I'm a little confused.  Everything I read says higher RPM = more power = faster, but given that the blade bites less of the air, I don't understand why this is.  

Does anyone know how to use the manual prop pitch to get more speed than you can get with the auto setting?

I keep thinking back to this excerpt I snipped a couple of years ago (from where I forgot to record):
 

Quote

 

"With the propeller set to 'manual', vou could adjust the blade pitch to achieve a top end ot 2400 rpm tor aerobatics and you would know that the rpm won't exceed that," John adds. Doing so would likely see the propeller slow to 1200 rpm at the apex of a loop or half-Cuban, reducing yaw as the aircraft pitches into the vertical. "You can do a lot with that propeller to improve performance, if you know how to use it. Though you have the ability to fire off the prop at the top of a vertical maneuver to increase or maintain rpm, you're adding to your own workload and you're going to see the rpm going through the redline on the dive it you don't coarsen the blades on the descent. It's much better to set the maximum rpm betore beginning aerobatics and leave it there."

The Bf 109E's propeller pitch control was a source of consternation among some Luftdwaffe pilots; those who used the controllable propeller pitch to their favour enjoyed a marked advantage over their RAF counterparts when facing Spitfires equipped with the early two-stage propeller. For less experienced pilots, however, the 'manual' system could be burdensome.

Oberleutnant Ulrich Steinhilver of III./ IG 52 recounted one such incident as his flight of Bf 109Es crossed the French coastline: "It was obvious that [the pilot] wasn't manipulating the pitch control with the skill of the more seasoned pilots to produce the same power as our machines.

We tried to tell him what to do on the radio but to no avail"

Half-way across the English Channel, the young pilot was ordered to leave the formation and return to base. Leutnant Erich Bodendiek, II. / JG 53, was equally disparaging of the Bf 109E's automatic propeller setting, describing the aircraft as "un-manoeuvrable... swaggering through the air like a pregnant duck"

I prefer to swagger through the air like a duck on birth control.

 

 

Edited April 1, 2024 by Rex