I suppose it "started" the first time someone had trouble starting one. He probably wasn't as clever as you, though.
The secret's out, everyone!! This guy knows how to start a wasp!
Just pulling your leg, mon.. Seriously, the installation, as in which type of plane it's in, has a lot to do with how the engine behaves. I'm guessing you flew a T-6, considering you're in London. I have no experience with this type of plane, so I couldn't tell you what the differences might be between this and, say, an Otter. I used to fly a beaver and when I first started flying it, if it was too cold or too hot, or rainy, or if I was grumpy, it would bark like a dog passing a peach pit, backfiring and embarassing me on half the starts. Then when I got used to the engine, it would start every time. We had a twin beech on wheels too, and the same thing, the pilot who was flying that would wake up the airport owls with a series of explosions every morning, and then after a while he smoothed out and had no trouble. I think most trouble with the R-985 comes from over-or-under priming. Some guys "pump" the throttle, some guys say NEVER pump the throttle...
I would talk to someone who flies one of those big "corncobs" and see what they say... watching those things come to life a cylinder at a time, looks like some kind of art form to get one of them started.
Also, in the "old days" there weren't the cool electric starters we have now, there were inertial starters you had to spin up by hand, then electric ones that would spin up with a motor and then pop a clutch to rotate the engine, there were cartridge starters that turned the engine over with gases from a shotgun-like cartridge that you "fired" from the cockpit, there were "boost coil" switches that I think were like the impulse coupling in a modern mag that the pilot had to use during start to make the spark hotter, (I think), all this shit made starting the engine like playing a piano. The beaver I flew had a little hole in the cowl where the handle for the inertia starter used to go, and it had plates over a bunch of holes in the cockpit with labels you could still read for things like "starter clutch" and "boost coil". I asked the chief pilot how you would have started the plane with all those controls in it and he said "never mind. You have a ways to go learning how to start it the way it is now." He was a grumpy old bastard. It also used to have a "bomb master" switch that didn't do anything (unfortunately) |
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) -- grab prop and run with it -- works even with no electrics -- get a cup of fuel and pour it down the carb -- I did it right below the tower at T Bay -- I don't think anyone realized what was going on -- 
