Railrunner130 Posted August 23, 2010 Share Posted August 23, 2010 I know that Cheyenne and Schenectedy had been test flying the NP2000 prop a while back. It promised all kinds of performance and efficiency improvements. However, it seems to have died out. What were the findings? I thought I'd heard something about they couldn't stand up to the heat/cold. Is this correct? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AMPTestFE Posted August 23, 2010 Share Posted August 23, 2010 Initially, they found some deficiencies when they took the airplane down to the Antartic, but have since fixed those issues. The system is now under flight test again to ascertain the performance qualities of the prop. The initial flight tests in 2008 were to evaluate handling characteristics in the take-off/landing/stall regimes. I had the honor of participating in some of those tests. I love this prop! Although the performance gains once advertised were not realized, the reliability and maintainability enhancements are going to be well worth the costs in the long run. Performance gains were initially promised to be 25% or so, but the snapshots we took 2 years ago were more like 9, maybe 10%. But hey, when you can leave the same prop on the plane for years without having to do any heavy maintenance on it, and whatever other benefits you'd gain from dramatically reduced sound and vibration levels on the plane, I'd say it'd be worth the cost & effort. Another, smaller benefit, is in that you could load on one "short" C-130 up to 8 props or more makes logistics abit easier. Changing a single blade at a time is nice as well. Did I mention I like this prop? Too bad I'm not being compensated by Hamilton Sundsrtum, huh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Railrunner130 Posted August 23, 2010 Author Share Posted August 23, 2010 Were there any cruise speed increases? Theoretically, a more efficient prop would allow a reduction in throttle, thereby saving fuel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AMPTestFE Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 I did some quickie numbers one day on a very short, low(ish) cruise altitude & didn't come up with too much that was significant. Like I said, they're doing all the performance manual testing right now. Our main focus was to find out what that prop does when you stall the airplane, or lose one on takeoff (VMCG/VMCA). It was a flight safety effort to clear the prop for further flight evals. Should hear something fairly soon, I'll check my sources. Cheyenne was claiming that having the electronic valve housing installed (without the 8-bladed prop) was resulting in around a 4% fuel savings per flight. I have no idea how valid that is, so take it as it is...thrid or fourth-hand. All I know, is that when the pilots were getting ham-fisted during the touch & goes, I wasn't seeing any....ANY, RPM fluctuations. It was a beautiful thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jansen Posted June 24, 2011 Share Posted June 24, 2011 Hamilton Sundstrand has completed performance testing of its NP2000 propeller on a US Air Force Lockheed Martin C-130H, while operational evaluation of the eight-bladed prop on the New York Air National Guard's LC-130 is almost complete, the United Technologies subsidiary said. By Kate Sarsfield, FlightGlobal http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/06/24/358704/paris-hamilton-sundstrand-tests-propeller.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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