Hallo pattern flyers,
who can give me more information on the KATO adjustablke prop.

This prop was used by Hanno Prettner with the modell MAGIC in the early ´80 .

Thank you for your help.
#
Best regards Michael

Hi,

I have one picture for you at least, it is from a Simprop catalog. He used it together with Super Tigre X 61 TST RE RC.
MaybeYou can translate the textfrom german to englishsince You live in Germany?

/Bo

I flew it for a number of years. As far as I know the only ones to compete with it in the USA were Steve Helms and myself.

You need a transmitter that has the special mixing functions for the prop. With that sort of programming you could slightly adjust the high pitch with a side lever on the TX. Then it was set up to go to a higher idle and full flat pitch with the last click or two of low throttle. This would act as a brake on the downlines. But the TX had to have some timing circuits in it so that the prop would not go to flat pitch before the throttle would come down, and that it would go to high pitch before the throttle came up. Otherwise you could blow the blades off it.

Overall it worked very well. But it was difficult to get parts and when the engines got more powerful it was impossible to get different blades to match the engine. Sort of just died out. I sure wish I had kept what I had. Would be fun to play with now.

Micheal,

You are interested in Mr. Kato's prop with adjustable pitch I see. Maybe interesting to show again,
Mister Kato could have had an example, not "adjustabla" but "auto"!
The picture, an advertisement in MAN, July 1962, auto pitch propeller of Dynamics Models inc.

Cees

My Dad has one of those auto adjustable props!

Hallo F3D, 15,50€ ohne Anleitung - ja das war ein Super Preis....

I have one of these auto's, but surely at least a version for .61 or .91..., it's kinda huge.
I have no data at all... When I get can get back to my stuff, I will post a pick.
If we find someone with an original kato, maybe we could make copies ? These adjustable pitch models do interest me as well...
Baught it used in Germany....

Out of the dusty vault.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_49...tm.htm#4900751

Hallo Cedar Yopantz,

thank you very much for your interessting information.

I have also got one adjustable prop, but I am not sure if it is a Kato once or not ??

Here some pictures.

What do you think ??

That is a beautiful prop/hub unit Michael. I am not an expert on these but my guess is that that is a completely different design, made by Graupner or Simprop possibly?




Bill

As far as I know, Graupner never made an adjustable Prop these days. Simprop sold the Kato Model.

I had one of those also. Almost impossible to make it work and with just the slightest over revving it would throw a blade. I don't remember who made it, other then it was German.

Hi All,
I think that is the old Schneider unit.
regards,
Dean P.

It is a LANDERT Prop ...

R.S.

I had one of those last shown. A really fine job mechanically but the(plastic/nylon?) blades were terrible, flexed like an old Kavan yellow nylon prop. Never had the courage to run it as I felt the blades would/could not take the strain. Also had a rather limited pitch range, max +7 inches from memory. Also looked rather too delicate to flick start the engine. Way open to correction here but I think Wolfgang Matt had one on his Model (Arrow??) at the F3a W/C in South Africa in 1979.Wish I still had it though. Paul.

Bit more info. Looks like Schneider and Landert were the same thing so Dean and Rainer are both right

Ray

Hi All,
Either way, we have the right folks here for an interesting question:

Rainer, what are your thoughts on fitting an electric motor with the variable pitc prop.
I tend to think that there would be advantages to "throttling" with pitch changes until very low power is needed.
Perhaps some non-linear pitch versus throttle curve? It would solve the aerobatic downline braking issue.

Regards,
Dean Pappas

I like to try a VP prop on my electric 2M plane as well as a classic pattern plane...

Dean great to see you here on the forums..


take a look at www.classicpatternassociation.com for the old days...


scott anderson

Gents,

Without air speed controlling a variable pitch propeller will be complicated to use and isn’t worth the effort I think.

Pulling? How to control the pitch and throttle? A preselect ratio? In steps?
Braking?

To have a more constant airspeed my goal of research is, control of the angle of attack of the propeller depending of power and/or braking level (asked by airspeed controller).
Result will be a better controlled rpm on any moment.

If that RPM isn’t within calculated limits, too low or too high, an variable pitch is interesting but has to be automatic controlled also of course.
Because these kind of controllers, airspeed combined with AOA, I did not see used by others the variable pitch propeller wasn’t and will not popular either I think.

I show an old control picture, which explains, simplified, the action of airspeed control. Load factor is not compensated and the control parameters of pulling and braking are the same in this scheme.

Problem was, the propeller will stall in brake action when the deviation between wanted and measured airspeed is too much. A lot of interesting research to do and after that maybe a variable pitch propeller will be interesting for me

For electrical propulsion (not for me!) there is one much more interesting RPM to propulsion transformer with a lot of pro’s and nearly no cons. but for that the electronic propulsion “speed controller” in the plane must have the programmable actions of an industrial four-quadrant variable-speed drive. Maybe it already has, but not interesting for “classic pattern flying” I think. Or do you like a double, contra rotating, windmill on a classic pattern plane?

Cees