LoL, this is easy to get confused on, cause I did. Rabb and I were indeed talking about the exact same thing. I did, however, have my terminology backwards. To 'bite' more air and get more power, you reduce the pitch. It is counter intuitive cause it seems in the mind that you are reducing. In this case, consider the blades being as wide as possible from the cockpit being reduced to 0 pitch. And when the blades are edge on to the cockpit being 100% pitch.
So, in order to go accelerate faster in the dive (within the limits of that particular aircrafts RPM range) you would increase the pitch.
In order to grab as much air with the prop as possible for maximum raw thrust, the pitch would be reduced to almost 0 degrees. It throws me off since,
in civil planes anyway, pulling backwards on the prop pitch lever increases pitch, pushing forward reduces it. In my head, pulling back should very well be reducing, lmfao!!!
In my own head, i say reducing when I am actually increasing, hence the confusion. Hope this clarification helps, lol.
@ Rabb - Thx for keeping me on my toes! Aviation is, and always has been, about getting it right the first time since second chances are so rare in this field.
Like gramps used to say, "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there aren't any OLD & BOLD pilots!"