Is that a stainless steel leading edge?
Wow, I didn’t think nickel would deform like that. I guess the alternative would be to fracture and that could be worse. Good luck getting it fixed!
Of interest to members - one can not simply replace a blade with the MT 3-blade units, at least not without courting balancing issues.
Upon advice from MT USA in FL, we're exchanging all three for an overhauled set to minimize downtime and guarantee a well balanced system after install. Otherwise, we might be chasing our tail for weeks upon weeks. The season is short.
This was a rare result from gravel wherein the face of the nickel edge collapsed in - likely from a squared off impact. Better for the prop to take damage than other parts. MT reported seeing only a handful of these results on the nickel leading edges. Also per MT - if the back face of the leading edge hadn't delaminated we might have been looking at a simple field repair.
I flew home for >200 air miles with this and there were no indications of damage during the flight (no vibrations, etc.). 400+ hours on these blades with frequent off-airport usage (often near gross) and this was the first leading edge damage we've had. Usually a bit of dust is the only evidence of picking up gravel.
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Bummer. That’s interesting with regard to having to replace all 3 blades when one gets nicked. I don’t recall the sales team ever mentioning that to me when selling me a prop for the 180. Is this only a MT dilemma or does the same go with the all metal 3 blade Hartzel voyager for example I wonder
can you post a picture of the front face of the blade?
I didn’t quite say that. This is different than a nick - it’s a delamination of the leading edge, which is not field repairable. A nick is easily repaired and a dented leading edge is not much of an issue either. If it was simply the latter, I’d be off flying today.
I have been using metal (Boer) props for over 40 years and have to admit I chopped a lot of brush over the years, I have heard good things about the new props and how light and how much they improved performance. I would only guess that some, such as myself should stay with metal props for off airport operations?
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I don’t know or care what caused the damage, I was just stating that with the type of flying man of us in Alaska do, we might need a prop that can take a lot more abuse than some of the newer performance props. Dominion prop shop in Anchorage won’t be holding any clearance sales in the near future from what I saw today.
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I’m going to the hangar to give my Mac a hug.
I’m going to the hangar to give my Mac a hug.
Back in the air. Took 15 days and $7K to recover in AK from an MT prop getting gravel bit.