The Showplanes cowl is one of the last major fiberglass pieces to be worked on. The instructions basically tell you to follow Van’s instructions with a couple of exceptions. So I got to putting the upper and lower halves together and marking the upper cowling for trimming to meet the ratios needed to make a perfect circle for the spinner/prop as well as the air inlets on either side. Here you can see the mark made using a straightedge.

Staightedge used to mark uniformly across the top cowl.

Double checking that the radius is 7.5″ (15″ diameter)

Getting close now with some trimming

Using the prop tool to double check the prop area circle.

You then clamp things in place and drill holes in the flanges to hold this position.

I chose to just do a single cleco on either side of the inlets as well as one in the flange between the inlets and the prop area.

I then used a laser level to mark the center of the bottom cowling to create a cutout for the nose wheel gear leg.

Marking either side of the centerline based on Van’s dimensions for width.

I then used a dremel tool to cut the slot. I estimated the length to cut and then slowly increased 1″ deeper at a time until I was at the bare minimum to get the lower cowling into position. Below is the initial length cut.. I cut a few more inches deeper. My plan is to split this lower cowl into 2 halves to accommodate the 3 bladed prop and I’d like to keep as much original material in this area as possible.

I put the top cowling into position and used a laser level to get it level (after leveling the aircraft) The cowl tool has 3/32″ holes all along the surface to facilitate holding the cowling into place in a fixed location so it doesn’t move during trimming.

Lining up the center line both fore and aft.

With this “extended” hub prop, the cowling sits far enough forward that there is minimal trimming required at the firewall.

Then starts the task of trimming to the firewall. I used a light on the inside to mark the location of the skin. You then trim 15″ on either side of the center line along the top only. I used a cut off wheel on the dremel tool and left it 2-3mm short.. The 12″ Permagrit sanding block was used for the remainder.. Once this center section is trimmed, the cowl falls down and aft allowing you to get a more accurate trim line for the sides.

I utilized a couple of clecos in the rivet holes of the skybolts to hold the upper cowling in place so it won’t move. I’ll fill these holes in later.

Then starts the task of installing the skybolts and drilling holes in the cowling. I started with a method that I saw Mark use. Using cardboard to drill a hole, I used a small scrap of fiberglass trimmed from the cowl to mock its thickness, and the cleco adapters that came with the kit to mark where the center of the hole was. The cardboard was taped into place so it can be flipped up, the cowl put into place, and flipped back down to drill an accurate hole.

The cowl was then put into place and the hole was drilled.. However, It didn’t really seem to work that well for me. Probably the tolerance of the hole in the cardboard not being perfect.

The first Skybolt installed.

What I found was that the light inside the cowling wasn’t direct enough and caused some incorrect alignments when marking the hole and drilling. So I taped a small light into the bottom of the cleco adapter to shine directly on the cowl while it was in position. This was used to drill the remaining holes which were more accurate.

I then worked one hole at a time from top center downwards towards the sides. Mark and drill the hole to 15/32″, insert the grommet and stud, rivet the receptacle in place, place the cowl back on and test fit the new Skybolt.

More to come..

Some time back, prior to really needing to order a prop.. I had done a bunch of research on the options.. There’s the stock Hartzell 2 blade metal prop, and various other 2 and 3 bladed props from the likes of Hartzell, MT, and Whirlwind. I put together the following table based on the options I found.

Brand	Model	Cost	Number blades	Blade length	Spinner size	Weight with spinner	Makeup	TBO
MT	PROP MTV12B/193-53	13850	3	76		43	Composite	6 yrs/1800hrs
MT	MTV9	15900	3	76or78		54.9	Composite	6 yrs/2400hrs
Hartzell	PROP C2YR-1BFP/F8068D	9025	2	80		55.6	metal	6 yr/2400 hr
Hartzell	PROP C3Y1R-1N/N7605C SPINNER C-4582-P	20355	3	78		67.5	composite
Whirl Wind	77HRT	12100	2	77		43	Composite	6 yr/800 hr
Whirl Wind	375HRT	14355	3	75		55	Composite	6 yr/800 hr
Whirl Wind	300-77	12500	3	77		42	Composite	6yr/800hr

While the stock 2 blade is widely regarded as the fastest prop, I felt the 3 blade was a better look for the Showplanes cowling I had already chosen. It also is much smoother and has a shorter blade length giving more clearance there.. Of course that doesn’t go without consequences largely in removing the lower cowling. The plan there is to split the lower cowl into two halves like several others have done. Just more fiberglass work.. 🙂

I saw several of the recent builders go with the Whirlwind 375HRT prop. I had spoken with them and was also planning on going in that direction. The main downside is the lower TBO times, but at about 100 hours per year.. I’d likely hit the same time limit prior to the hours limit, which is the same as the MT and Hartzell.

Fast forward to prop order time, which I had delayed a bit due to the 4-6 week lead times I was consistently given by Whirlwind. Guess what.. They no longer are selling that prop (support only) in favor of their newest 300-77 prop. Which is all fine and everything, but the weight reduction (of all things) was concerning.

Why concerning, you ask? Well weight and balance concerning.. The RV-10’s CG moves aft as you burn gas.. Ideally, you’d like to have your empty weight as close to the forward CG limit as possible so as to allow for max carrying capability and gas burn as you go longer distances, even if that means throwing in some ballast when solo. Having a prop that is over 10 lbs lighter out front combined with my Air Conditioning (mostly CG neutral, but ever so slightly aft), an O2 bottle, and a standard technology battery (read heavy) behind the baggage bulkhead, I was concerned.

It’s difficult to know exactly what my empty weight will be, but I grabbed 2-3 samples of what I could find and was provided by other builders. I did a bunch of playing with W&B by estimating the arm of the prop (approx at the hub) at 32.7″ from this picture:

I did that by measuring the scale with a ruler between 25″ and 50″ and then calculating the number of inches per 1/32″ and figuring out the distance to add to 25″ to get to a line drawn through the prop location.. I felt that was good enough for my comparison purposes..

I then found an example W&B spreadsheet online that had lots of weight scenarios listed for that given plane. I modified the spreadsheet to subtract out the weight of the prop that plane had on it and added back in the WhirlWind Prop weight. Here is the stock aircraft examples of empty and gross weight.

			AIRCRAFT EMPTY
Location			ARM	WEIGHT (LB)	WEIGHT (KG)	MOMENT
Left Main Wheel			124.31	621	282.27	77197
Right Main Wheel			124.44	608	276.36	75660
Nose Wheel			50.44	328	149.09	16544
Main Fuel Tanks	0	gallons	108.9			0
Pilot			114.58			0
Copilot			114.58			0
Passenger			151.26			0
Passenger			151.26			0
Baggage			173.5			0
Survival Gear			173.5			0
Remove stock prop			32.7	0		0
Add WW Prop			32.7	0		0
		Totals		1557	708	169400
		C of G Location		108.799
		Forward Limit		107.80
		Aft Limit		116.24
			AIRCRAFT AT GROSS
Location			ARM	WEIGHT (LB)	WEIGHT (KG)	MOMENT
Left Main Wheel			124.31	621	282.27	77197
Right Main Wheel			124.44	608	276.36	75660
Nose Wheel			50.44	328	149.09	16544
Main Fuel Tanks	60	gallons	108.9	360		39204
Pilot			114.58	186	80.00	21312
Copilot			114.58	176	80.00	20166
Passenger			151.26	176	80.00	26622
Passenger			151.26	176	80.00	26622
Baggage			173.5	59		10237
Survival Gear			173.5	10		1735
Remove stock prop			32.7	0		0
Add WW Prop			32.7	0		0
		Totals		2700	1028	315297
		C of G Location		116.777
		Forward Limit		107.80
		Aft Limit		116.24

So about 1″ aft of forward limit empty and slightly out of CG aft loaded up with full fuel and passenger weight somewhat equally spread around.

Now comes the effect of doing the prop swap:

			AIRCRAFT EMPTY
Location			ARM	WEIGHT (LB)	WEIGHT (KG)	MOMENT
Left Main Wheel			124.31	621	282.27	77197
Right Main Wheel			124.44	608	276.36	75660
Nose Wheel			50.44	328	149.09	16544
Main Fuel Tanks	0	gallons	108.9			0
Pilot			114.58			0
Copilot			114.58			0
Passenger			151.26			0
Passenger			151.26			0
Baggage			173.5			0
Survival Gear			173.5			0
Remove stock prop			32.7	-55.6		-1818
Add WW Prop			32.7	42		1373
		Totals		1543	708	168956
		C of G Location		109.470
		Forward Limit		107.80
		Aft Limit		116.24
			AIRCRAFT AT GROSS
Location			ARM	WEIGHT (LB)	WEIGHT (KG)	MOMENT
Left Main Wheel			124.31	621	282.27	77197
Right Main Wheel			124.44	608	276.36	75660
Nose Wheel			50.44	328	149.09	16544
Main Fuel Tanks	60	gallons	108.9	360		39204
Pilot			114.58	186	80.00	21312
Copilot			114.58	176	80.00	20166
Passenger			151.26	176	80.00	26622
Passenger			151.26	176	80.00	26622
Baggage			173.5	59		10237
Survival Gear			173.5	10		1735
Remove stock prop			32.7	-55.6		-1818
Add WW Prop			32.7	42		1373
		Totals		2686	1028	314853
		C of G Location		117.202
		Forward Limit		107.80
		Aft Limit		116.24

Note that empty, it moved the CG aft by 0.671″ and by 0.426″ in the gross case.

I, of course, ran a bunch of other configs including our Family profile (Assuming Declan fully grown) and it would all be okay.. but low on fuel you can actually get slightly aft of the limit with lighter prop. All would be fine with the weight of the standard prop. I won’t bore you with several tabs of spreadsheet data I played with here.. 🙂

All of this further reinforced the need to find a prop that was close to the stock 2 bladed prop for piece of mind. That left me with 2 choices.. Hartzell 3 blade (super expensive) or the MT MTV-9 prop..

There were a couple of other builders that have used this prop. Van’s typically recommends the MTV-12. One of the main reasons they used it was the max HP rating of the MTV-12 is around 300HP, and they had similar engines to me.. meaning cylinders ported and polished, cold air induction, and higher compression ratios.. MT suggests the MTV-9 for these applications as it can handle significantly more HP (thus the extra weight). In addition MT says that there is no issue using electronic ignition with this prop at my approx HP. (they didn’t support doing that with the MTV-12, even though I know others have done it). So all of that plus the weight that is very close to the Stock 2-blade and I decided to go with it. I placed an order for the MTV-9-B/198/52 with nickel leading edges in a matte black with white tips configuration. They also suggested this spinner, which I passed by Bryan at Showplanes, and he thought it would work fine.

The issue came with the 148mm prop flange to aft spinner dimension, which I was asked about and didn’t think it would be an issue. Especially seeing Bryan said it would be okay and I know other RV-10 builders that have used this prop.

Until it was an issue..

I bought the cowl installation tool from Flyboy accessories to place the cowl ahead of getting the prop. It is well designed and provides an adjustable 15″ wheel that serves to set the cowl back from the spinner assembly.

I set the spacing to 148mm minus about a 1/4″ gap. Placed the upper cowl in position.

And DoH! the cowling is so far forward it doesn’t even reach the firewall.

I contacted my MT guy and described the issue and to see if they might have any other spinner/hub setups that might work better for me. In the meantime I mulled over what to do.. I had heard of another builder using the Hartzell 3 bladed prop with an I-hub config which pushes the spacing out enough to fit the AC compressor without having to cut and bump out the cowling. I got some info on that as an option.. I also contemplated what would happen if I cancelled my MT order.. Either lose some/all deposit money or continue with the purchase and try to sell it..

MT got back to me with a spinner specification sheet. I used the info I got about the Hartzell I hub spacing and did some mock ups and measuring.. I ended up getting a range of prop flange to aft spinner measurements that matched the Hartzell I hub design at the minimum side and a measurement as far forward as possible with almost no cowling overlap onto the firewall at the max side. I filled out their form and asked if there was anything off the shelf that would work.. I came up with somewhere between 69.3mm and 82mm would work for me.

A couple of days later engineering came back with this .. A P-810-3 spinner with 75mm spacing. It’ll work!!! What a relief..

I mocked this distance up and checked the spacing of the AC compressor up front with the lower cowl roughly in place.. There is plenty of room to not have to do any lower cowl modifications for the compressor. Win win!

I told MT that it would work. A change order was put in with no anticipated delays seeing I’m still far enough out in production. I’ve been able to continue forward with the cowling install now that the spacing is known.

I will say that I’ve encountered a bunch of negativity about MT and using their props along my research. While I agree that might become true with months of delays in the case of something catastrophic that needs to go back to Germany to get fixed. For most run of the mill things it shouldn’t ever be an issue (at least I hope not). The local guys are easy to work with and bend over backwards to make things right. I also have a certified MT service shop relatively nearby in CT that I could drive to if need be. Thus far, I’m impressed with MT.

Sorry for the long post… it’s been a few months in the making.