RobertL18C wrote:
The beautiful Bellanca Viking, in addition to the Robin, is another advertisement for wooden load bearing structures
I love Vikings too, and other wood structured planes, but an airframe is not the same as a propeller. You’ll notice if you look closely that Vikings have metal propellers 
The reason is that sometime in about the 1930s it became apparent that wood wasn’t strong enough to allow desirable airfoil sections on a propeller. For a wing or a fuselage wood is better, the size and relatively low loads point towards a material that is low density and cheap per unit volume, strength is not so important.
MT are also great for Prop overhaul. Sent mine there and got a very fair price and great service.
Also worth mentioning that they discouraged me from a more expensive way to overhaul as it was not in my interest, despite the fact that it would have been much more profitable for them.
Yes, that is my experience too. A friend of mine in the USA got a brand new three blade prop from MT afte rhe complained that the paint did not hold well … after flying in IMC for three years. Try that one with any other manufacturer.
Also that they installed my 4-blade for freem balanced it and told me that I could return it (including revers installation) for FREE wihin a couple of weeks was a great offer. I kept it.
Peter wrote:
I think the bump in the middle is the rise and (relative) fall of Cirrus, mainly.
I remember reading in some GA magazine, must have been in the beginning of 2015. They presented those curves and said “the trend has definitely changed” or something like that. Then came statistics from 2015 and 2016 
For a propeller it’s the gyroscopic forces that limits the weight. Too heavy, and the propeller/engine shaft will bend too much due to the gyroscopic forces when pitching or yawing. It is also very hard on the engine mounts. I made this experiment on my propeller (wood with carbon fiber coating) just to calculate the moment of inertia, it’s very easy to do. The propeller blades themselves, see mainly centrifugal forces, so a material with a high strength to weight ratio is preferable. Wood is therefore excellent, about the same strength to weight ratio as aluminium, but much lighter. Even better still is carbon composite, but not by much compared with light wood (balsa for instance). Wood (light wood) is still much lighter than carbon composite though, but also much weaker. A carbon fiber composite blade can be very strong and very aerodynamically shaped (thin), but not really any lighter than a wooden blade.
I’m not entirely sure why carbon fiber cloth is put on wooden blades. It will not make it very much stronger in radial direction, but it will make it much heavier and bulkier. Much more robust maybe from stones and stuff, and more durable in general perhaps. Maybe also a bit stiffer in twisting. It’s a bit strange, the best would be hollow carbon composite, maybe filled with some very low density foam? I would think. Wood is good at dampening vibrations, carbon composite is definitely not, don’t know if that really matters though.
Mooney discussion is long gone, but the prop discussion is also quite interesting!
internet found official Porsche picture at the time 1983
That car was a better investment than the plane, as it turns out.
