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Dan,
I have a Hartzell Scimitar 3 blade on
my ES. My plane also has a Lycoming IO-540 in it, which I believe is
a bit heavier than the IO-550 (I'm not so sure it's heavier than a TSIO550
though). I had a custom made mount fabricated for the 540 which is much
beefier than the stock mount that comes with the kit and is, therefore,
somewhat heavier. I also mounted my battery on the firewall as well as
a preoiler, which probably weighs about 6 pounds. Finally, I put a
polished spinner on the nose, which is certainly a bit heavier than the
composite one. About the only things I did to counter all of this is put
an oxygen bottle and a halon fire bottle as far aft in the baggage area (which
goes 16" further aft than standard) as I could. I also made my elevator
trim tab a bit wider than called for in the book.
Even with all of this, my CG is right
at the forward limit with me in the plane by myself. As I add fuel,
passengers and especially baggage, it moves back. The A&P that helped
me with my weight and balance was amazed to learn that there was no
configuration he could come up with that put my plane out of
CG.
If I had to do it again, the only
thing I'd change is mount the battery in back, as the plane is a bit nose heavy
on landing. At full flaps, I use full nose up trim and land with a little
extra speed (cross the fence around 80 knots) and fly the nose all the way back
down or it'll plop on the runway as soon as the mains touch down. I've
adjusted to this and it's no problem at all.
The bottom line here is that I fully
agree with Kirk: get the best prop for your plane and don't worry about the CG -
it's not THAT big a deal (at least it wasn't for me).
Good luck,
Skip Slater
N540ES
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