When I finally put the 5 Blade assembly onto the Sea Fury (rather than the 4 blade format I had only used before), it didn't last long!! The Hub "Exploded' when I throttled up to High Power for the take-off run!
Two blades shot outwards, and that helped complete the destruction of the Hub - splitting it more (fully) - but amazingly the blades AND the Bolt/Nuts, which were still in them, got out of the blade slots in the Spinner without damaging the Spinner! A bit of a "Square peg in a round hole" situation, but they got out without damaging things anyway!
The 5 blade hub is black plastic, and the 4 blade hubs are white plastic, so maybe they are a bit different TYPE of plastic? Thus maybe the 5 blade hubs are not quite as strong/good?
For some reason I had taken another 5 bladed assembly with me, so I got to change to that and try it out.... it was a bit scarey, but it all worked fine like you would HOPE they would!
In Airspeed terms I could not tell any difference at all from the 4 blade to the 5 blade. This will be because at low to medium loads (Level Flight) the Propeller blades can easily do their traction job as per the Pitch value they have. It wouldn't matter if you had 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 blades...
A difference in multi-blades comes when it is under higher LOAD. More blades means there is more total "bite", so when the Propeller needs to "drag" the plane forwards under that duress, more blades can do that stronger - and thus draw more Power too. This occurs if you hold the plane on the ground statically... or do a vertical climb in flight. The SLOWER the plane is moving, when you try to go faster, the more Load it will then be under.
And again.... Level Constant Speed Flight is a low/medium load, so the blade number becomes almost negligible.
