Kerry Richburg with Sac RVators came out this afternoon and we put the airplane on the scales. It's a bit of a porker coming in at 1262 LBs. Initial W&B calculations are showing within CG limits. Afterwards, Lee and I worked with the new Prop Balancer (which required fabricating a special mounting bracket) and did some initial tests with this also. The vibration I was feeling was not as bad as it seemed. The acceptable "Inches Per Second" (IPS) is .20 or less. At the worst condition which was around ~1650 Prop RPM's, the IPS was .42. At other RPM's up to 2200, it was around .37. So, not that bad -- actually okay for a static balance. I guess I was just a bit overly concerned. We should be able to dynamic balance this prop down to within specs this weekend. Something I found very cool about this Quinti hub was that there is 36 equally-space holes drilled in the prop flange which can be used to represent 10 degree increments around the flange. This makes locating weights simple once the Prop Balancer provides the degrees relative to the master blade where the "heavy" spot is. Maybe other props have these holes too -- I've not noticed, but this is very helpful! ...Still moving forward!!!!
Aircraft with two of the three scales in place just prior to weighing
Prop balancer on special mount with reflective tape on the "master" blade
Backside of hub with markings of 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees relative to master blade
