Glorieuse on Shark : feedback from Edge Performance

Thomas, president of the well-known EDGE PERFORMANCE company, owns a Shark aircraft with an Edge EP912Sti_Gen2 engine (160HP) engine. He tested 2 models of E-PROPS Glorieuse propellers. Here below his report.

“After having flown our Turbo Shark equipped with our EP912Sti_Gen2 engine (160HP) with the Woodcomp KW-20 2-bladed propeller, we installed the DUC Tiger. The DUC Tiger was clearly quite a bit heavier, requiring ballast to the rear section of the aircraft as it was already nose heavy. The Tiger has an impressive static thrust and pull hard right away, but the top speed was 3-4KTS less than with the two bladed Woodcomp propeller.
Next, we installed the E-PROPS GLOR-3-175-C8-T propeller which at first, I had little confidence in. Simply because I am old school, and the thin blades looked lime something for a powered paraglider, not something for a high-performance airplane.
But boy were I up for a surprise. The E-PROPS Glorieuse GLOR-3-175-C8-T didn’t quite pull so hard on the initial take-off roll, but after a few meters, you could really feel the blades start to catch the air and give a good bite. Climb rate was a staggering 2400’/m, approximately 200-300’/m more compared to the Tiger, and 7-800’/m more over the Woodcomp. The lightweight propeller, less than 4Kg reduced the aircrafts overall weight by almost 10Kg, which means a 10Kg gain in payload. Win-win !

After approx. 100 hours we were so lucky to receive the latest 916iS propeller from E-PROPS, the GLOR-3-175-C9-T which first looked to me like an even more masculine propeller. Who doesn’t like that ? But after seeing and believing in the very thin cord Glorieuse GLOR-3-175-C8-T propeller, I had my hopes high once again. The propeller installed in the same way, meaning no modifications and effortless installation taking approximately on hour to finish. Pitch end stop was adjusted, and initial ground runs were conducted. The dynamic propeller balancing equipment was installed and it showed an amazing result of 0.05IPS which I decided to not mess with at all.
First flight was amazing. This propeller with the wider cord really bites and pulls hard from the get-go. Initial climb showed between 2800-3000’/m which felt totally unnaturally and surreal. After several hours of testing in altitudes ranging from 1000-22.200’ it is clear that we have a winner ! They say there is no such thing as a free lunch but let me tell you there is ! This new propeller improved on acceleration, take-off roll, climb rate and as much as 8-10KTS throughout all altitude ranges.

Thank you E-PROPS for making an amazing propeller which is both very price competitive, lightweight and a super performer !“