Originally Posted by
AutoPirateOn
There is absolutely no chance of pulling on the prop will hurt anything, with one exception: don't pull at the tip of the prop. If you do, the prop will act like a lever and give you a mechanical advantage that will put a huge force near the hub that might damage it.
Stop and think about it for a second, what pulls the airplane through the air? The propeller obviously. It's designed to take a lot of pulling force, but not a whole lot of sideways force, so try and minimize that by pulling close to the hub with both hands.
Also, thinking that using your hands will damage the prop itself is not correct. Have you ever smashed your head on one? Ask a line guy who has been on the job for anytime longer than a month how hard those props are. Even the wooden ones. The only way you will hurt it is if you beat it with a hammer.
They do jack airplanes by the wings, but you'd had better know the proper area to do it. Otherwise you will punch the jack through the sheet metal. The point is almost always right under the wing spar.
This is excellent advice.
My father was an ANG pilot and aeronautical engineer for the Department of the Army. He also had a Howard DGA for many years.
One time, while moving the airplane out of the hangar, another individual decided to help by pulling on the propeller and my father went ballistic. My brother and I were pushing on the wing struts as instructed and my mother was providing wingtip clearance.
After Dad cooled down, and that took a while, he told me the torque exerted by pulling on a propeller blade could affect the propeller's balance. This was more important because the Howard is a tail-dragger. The propeller's hub sits up higher than a tricycle gear airplane.
The lesson I took away from that is NEVER pull an airplane by its propeller regardless of whether on not it's a fixed-pitch prop or constant speed prop.