WANTED: 60" wooden prop

[cstutsman]

Please excuse any ignorance of airplane lingo on my part, as I'm trying to help the love of my life (my Daddy) find a propeller for his airplane. He is looking for a 60" wooden propeller with prime pitch. The engine is a Franklin 2-cylinder. He located one for $700 but thought he should be able to find one for half that price. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Dad is 71 years old and we'd like him to finish putting his plane back together and sell it before he is tempted to crash it again!

[Dave]

I would love to be able to help any 71 year old trying to get a Franklin 2 cylinder airplane in the air! I've got to guess that the propeller he needs is fairly rare and might be hard to come by. Maybe we should have a fund raiser to help him buy the one he's already found.


What do you mean "crash it again?

[cstutsman]

Well, I mean "crash it again." Following a 10 year vacation from flying, he bought this plane about a year ago, without consulting anyone in the family. He assured us it needed some work before he would be able to fly it. A week later, I was sitting in the chair at the salon and the stylist had just whacked six inches off the hair on one side of my head, when I got the phone call I had dreaded since I was six years old. He was landing and he just didn't feel good about it, so decided to go around and try again. As he was beginning to climb, the wind whipped him into a nearby stand of trees, which broke his fall. The third such accident at the same landing strip that we're aware of. He landed on top of his shiny bald head and had quite a gash there as well as under his chin. Other than those and some less serious bumps and bruises, he was fine! He has been repairing/rebuilding the plane since then to try to recoup some of what he paid for that one ride! He said it came with a Sensenich (sp?) propeller -- any ideas where I can find something like this? He thinks I can find anything on the internet, and I don't want to disappoint him -- but I'm not having much luck because I really don't know too much about what I'm looking for. Any help would be appreciated!

[Dave]

Well, unfortunately there are hundreds of different models of propellers, and the FAA regulates exactly which propeller can be used on any given aircraft/engine combination. So at the very least you would need that information to find the design number of the prop you're looking for. (It doesn't necessarily have to be made by Sensenich.) Once you have that information, and can look for a specific model, there are several ways to try to find one, including here, EBay, www.barnstormers.com and several others.

If he has already found one for $700, that might be the best deal he can find, however, as a new one would likely cost twice that much.