Hi all,
Of course I agree whatever you want, as long as it can improve the overall sim quality.
I thought some of you might be interested in the process of modeling a prop, especially a blade. This particular part is probably the hardest to get it right, and in all my Flight Sim experience, I rarely saw well made props, whereas the rest of the aircraft is usually done with top quality details and geometry.
The geometry of a blade has to be think with this in mind : It's a wing, a twisted wing whose chord and airfoil evolve along the blade length. SO you have to start from a basic airfoil, asymmetrical shape ( or a circle in the case of variable pitch props ). This is easy and 90% of the time is tinkering and fine tuning shapes, to match the base template ( usually a couple of real world picture from different angles is enough ).
The hardest part is probably finding the sweet spot regarding the twist of the blade, to give the right curvature on leading and trailing edge, as, when you alter one cross section in width for example, the whole twist has to be entirely redone, and that takes hours and hours...
Below are some steps of a new scratch built B-25 prop, for IL-2. Of course, once the Hub is made, it can be used for all the prop range that use the same hub. Here, it's the ubiquitous Hamilton Standard 23E50 hub, which held blades for Corsairs, B-17/-24, DC-3, B-25, TBM and many more ...
Defining basic airfoils, blade contour shapes and twist
Use a front view of the prop to fine tune contour and cross-check regularly with top view to adjust the correct twisting values
The key for a well made blade is a well made twist along the blade length
Once bolted on the hub, the result starts to look satisfying... Lots of tuning and optimization are left to be done on this
@Tom2 : Ok the Lightning prop will be on my next - to do list -
Cheers,
Hueyman