by Rick Durden

The photo to the right has a certain startling quality. It’s of the business end of a 30-year-old, 180-HP Mooney with a newish three-blade prop in place of the two-blade model the factory installed on the airplane. Depending on your point of view, it looks either rakishly sexy or slightly out of place, like white walls on a Jaguar.

Either way, the Mooney is part of a growing fleet of airplanes that have converted to three-blade props. When last we examined this topic seven years ago, the three-blade trend was just emerging and we concluded then that much of what drove owners to make the switch was that three-blade props…