PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Propellors on Stratocruiser, DC6/7 & Britannia
Old 17th Feb 2009, 19:30
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barit1
 
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In general - today - variable pitch props are constant speed, although there are exceptions outside the airline world:

- Early counterweight props (the counterweight being used to drive the prop to coarse or high pitch) often had a simple two-position control valve, to select either full coarse (i.e. low rpm) or full fine pitch (i.e. high rpm). It had the advantage of being simple and troublefree.

- Ultralights may have a direct hand-crank pitch selection, anywhere from full fine to full coarse or anywhere between.

Adding a governor to the former makes the prop constant-speed (although the pilot is able to select any RPM within a set range). Thus the two controls are throttle and prop rpm.

If feathering is added to the above, the feather feature may either be a additional control, or it may be integrated with the prop rpm control.

But with a constant speed prop, I've never seen a separate "pitch" control - pitch is controlled by the governor.
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