Armstrong starter

[mustang51]

Getting a little slow here so I though I would throw this out.....besides I am retired and have time to think about things like this.
All you pilots out there who have hand prop a engine. Tell us what is the largest engine you did this to and if you have any horror storys.
To start the largest for me was on a Taperwing with all kind of fairings for speed, it was a racer at one time. White with maybe red trim and flown by a female. 300hp Lyc Radial.
A friend had a 8A. When you flood the engine the way to fix it was to open the throttle, switch off, rotate backwards 6 or 8 times. Close the throttle, switch on and try again. Well it started at full throttle and he just made it to the strut and was just able to reach the switch.
Honest truth. I am sure this never happens today.
Bob

 

[sandar]

In the late 1960's, I was being taught how to swing a prop. It was at a gliding club, they had two tugs, one a DH Tiger Moth and the other an Auster J1N, both devoid of electric starters.

It was one of those rare English sumer days, hot and sunny, but still a little chilly aloft, especially in an open cockpit. I mention this because the guy, the Tiger Moth pilot, who was showing me how to start the venerable old biplane, was wearing a sidcot flying suit, unzipped to the waist, over a T shirt and shorts and wearing sandals.

There was a pilot in the cockpit operating the switches, throttle and mixture, my teacher swung the prop, which caught straight away with a cough, but his sandals offered no grip on the grass and he slipped forward, ending up on is rump. The prop caught his flapping flying suit and ripped it off his chest. He was totally uninjured, but I think the three of us all came as close as anyone to having an involuntary bowel movement.

A salutary lesson in wearing appropriate clothing. After that, I always made sure that in addition to switches on, throttle set etc. that brakes were on or chocks in place and I refused to swing a prop if I wasn't wearing appropriate footwear.

I did nearly break my wrist swinging a Volkswagen engine in a homebuilt Druine Turbulent, so easy to turn over usually with the flick of the wrist, but the poxy thing backfired and seized. The new owner had used the wrong petrol and wrecked the engine.

The biggest motor I tried to start was in a Stinson Reliant. It was also a long way off the ground compared with thew more usual Austers, Cubs, Moths etc. The batteries were dead and so I was asked to swing the thing, without success. What I didn't now was the pilot had been trying to start the thing on the electric starter, and flattened the battery, there was something wrong with the motor. I'm not sure which engine was in that model, but I believe it was a civilianised version of one supplied to the Royal Navy during the war, in which case, I believe it would have been a 290 hp Lycoming, but it may have been re-engined with a small unit, I don't know.

 

[mustang51]

I know of some pilots who fly in stocking feet. Try it,works fine on those greaser landings.

 

[java2srv]

No pictures, but years ago, 1973-1974 when my Pop took my brother and I and some friends to the Watsonville California Antique Fly-in we saw a group "hand" propping a P-51.

This consisted of maybe 6 large guys, a length of rope and 3 canvas pockets attached to the rope so they were spaced equal to the distance between the end of the prop blades.

The process, to my youthful eyes and aged memory, was that they would go through the usual pulling through with the prop to clear and prime cylinders, then attach the rope to the tips of the prop and take off running across the ramp. It took them 5 or 6 tries but they got the Merlin to fire.

Of course this was back when Warbirds weren't so pristine as they are now, so the pilot worked the throttle and mixture and managed to keep it coughing and missing for a half minute or so, but it eventually quit.

At that point they didn't try again, maybe they went off to look for a battery.