hi there from Toledo

Back to the future

Okay, I have been flying epowered airplanes since before brushless motors, before lipos, and even before NIMH cells. So back in the prehistoric days to stop a prop was also a concern and since no ESC (and they were analog not digital!!) at the time had a brake function, you had to stop the prop mechanically.

How to stop a prop

What we did was to take a servo and a piece of nyrod and install the outer rod from the servo through the front firewall and past the motor stopping just behind the prop arc. The servo was connected to the retract channel and so was switchable. The inner nyrod was the attached to the servo arm in the usual manner and the length of the inner rod was adjusted so that the inner rod would extend just a little bit into the plane of the prop so that when extended the inner rod would interfere with the prop's rotation and buzz like a cicada if the power were on. If the motor was turned off and just freewheeling, this interference was enough to stop the prop and stop it in the same position every time. It saved props during landings without LG but you had to replace the inner nyrod every so often and it did scuff up the TE of the prop a little but so it goes.

This really worked quite well, give it a try.

ciao -rjf