Black powder and aircraft engines

[feralmerril]

I learned to fly in a old 8A Luscombe. Had the 65 HP. No starter, or for that matter, radio. Had to hand prop it. Think it was made in 1946. I was young and dumb. Once I gassed it up and no help was around. No place to tie the tail down. I guess I cracked the throttle a tad much. I twisted her tail,(hand propped it) she started off on me! It must have looked funny to see this fat boy sprint! I caught up in a few yards, reached in throatled back and was able to get in. Of course that was close to 45 years ago. I have heard of several storys where the same thing happened and the plane would fly off with nobody in it!

 

[walnutred]

Originally posted by feralmerril:
I had a old boy I used to work with that flew torpedo bombers tell me about it, wish I asked him why. Maybe I probley did, and forgot the answer.

My dad flew torpedo bombers in WW2. While watching an old clip of the planes being started with what looked to me like flare guns I asked the same question.

I was told that first the large high compression engines were hard to start with body weight. Second, with hand starting there was a real chance of someone being sucked into the prop when the engine kicked in. Or not getting hands and legs out of the way quick enough.

 

[pbslinger]

From doing a search, the Brits used cordite for the Spitfire starters.

 

[Noah Zark]

Cartridge starters were common on large radial piston engines. Manufacturers were Eclipse and Coffman.

Noah

 

[Gutpile Charlie]

One time, a long time ago, I was a kid hanging out at the airport. An aerial applicator had stopped by (we used to call them crop dusters back then) with a Stearman. I was the only person around and he asked me to help him get started.

I got to crank up the inertia starter and pull the clutch to kick it in. Now for those of you that are not familiar, an inertia starter was one that you turned a crank, like on an old cream separator and brought a flywheel up to speed. When it sounded just right, you pulled a t-handle that activated a clutch that kicked in the fly wheel in to turn the engine. The person in the cockpit would work the throttle, primer and mixture to get the engine to "catch" and start.

Sometimes it didn't happen on the first try so you would have to crank it up to speed again.

Well, the time I did this, I was standing on the left tire of the Stearman, with the exhaust stack right in front of my face. Well, when that sucker kicked off, I got a face full of exhaust and nearly lost my balance.

Any kind of manual starting has a fairly high degree of danger associated with it. Thank God for electric starters!

 

[walkinghorse]

This site even references cartridge start up for a B-52. Don't know myself but that is what the poster on the forum of this site says?

http://www.flightlevel350.com/...x.php?showtopic=2948

And another use for the left over cartridge case from a B-57!!

http://ourstory.com/thread.html?t=332792