There are both advantages and disadvantages to changing prop pitch.

I was "playing" with my Skylark 70 a couple weeks ago and wanted to see how the plane would react with a 15-4 that I had in my prop box. What I had on the plane was a 15-8. The engine is an OS .75 AX, which flew just fine, by the way. But, I was looking to see how it would react on verticals.

The engine (prop) noise was louder because the RPM increased quite a bit. The takeoff roll when going to full throttle almost immediately (fast gradual.. if there is such a term.. ), was very short.. no surprise there. Verticals were "unlimited".. again, no surprise there.

But, the differences were not something that I would want to keep that prop on that engine / plane combination. The noise level was high enough to cause problems, especially when going from half to full throttle in flight, and pulling to a vertical climb.

So, as I said, there are advantages to switching over to lower pitch, but, there is also a down side. For you guys flying out in the desert, quite a few of us on the east coast envy that freedom. But we have neighbors (one in particular that complains about everything) and would hate to lose the field because of a ripping prop noise causing complaints to the Forestry people or to our local politician.

I don't do 3D so the hovering part of it just doesn't matter to me. But, I'm sure that with that engine/prop combination, the Skylark would hover. But, again, it's pretty loud as compared to the old standby 15-8 which keeps the RPM's down below 10,000 and gives me great performance.

CGr.