REFLECTOR: Big engine on a STD RG?

[Jack Sheehan]

Richard,
I was at the service center when the brits (Dennis Wood) were 
building their big engine 173_RG ( long wing) and as best I can 
recall the numbers during flight test were not as good as I expected. 
I think the fact that they had to go to a smaller diameter prop and 
four blades they lost some of the cruise performance. They did build 
it for short fields Since airspeed is a function of the cube root of 
horsepower you have to add a lot of horses to increase the speed and 
any loss in the prop hurts. Dennis does have a neat looking airplane. 
With the four blade prop we called it a spitfire.

Jack