For you pilots

Not hardly! I was imagining all sorts of bad things. All I can say is they were lucky and I'd never do it.

I wonder if that would work with a hard starting riding lawn tractor? TIC.

I have one son, who might try it, but would wrap the rope the wrong way!

I'm not even a pilot and I'd never doit.

Could you post a link?

Embedded videos do not show up on iPad.

Thanks.

That is unusual.

Crop dusters. All that needs to be said.

Not quite the same thing, but

here's my uncle Clifford somewhere in the South Pacific in a photo dated 25 April 1944 demonstrating a "Manual Starter System for F-6-F."

Sure, just don't bend the crank shaft.

That would be the same as push starting a stick shift vehicle with a dead battery.
Just make dam sure you don't pull the rope through the prop and it should be ok.
When I see those old video clips of the old-timers grabbing the prop and give it a spin to start up.... now that I would never do!
E.

Just goes to show that rednecks are global... LOL

I have hand propped a plane and it is no big deal if you follow procedures, rules & common sense. That thing with the rope though is another story - I could just see all sorts of things going wrong.

You should look for old photographs of engine starts before starters. The Liberty engine had all sorts of ways to get running. I have seen clips of three people, one at the end of the prop blade with one hand and the other two in order holding hands and start running.

Several folks on a bungee cord with a cuff over the end of the prop like the ones on the Navy plane photo of WW II in one of the posts here. Is another method. Look at the movie Spirit of St Louis and you will see a couple of large engines hand propped.

I have seen engines on T-6 hand propped, that was 600 hp. The Stearman at 220 hp was hand started quite often. I have propped airplanes since I was 14 years old, I'm 77 now and still hand prop my 1946 Piper J-3. I hand propped a Cessna 182 that I owned back in the 1960's. It had a 230 hp O-470L engine.

I'll bet that was not the first time those folks had started and engine like that and it will not be last time. You don't have to spin the engine, all you need to do it get it through one compression stroke on on cylinder, if it is timed right and has fuel in the intake, the engine should fire right up. The magneto supplying the spark has an inertial impulse on one of the magnetos, you can hear it click when turning the prop over before turning on the Mag Switch.

The main thing is to not let a stranger prop your airplane because he volunteers, he might not know the first thing about what he needs to do. Make sure the person in the plane that your are turning the prop for knows what he is doing also. The danger comes when the one doesn't know what the other is doing. Then it even worse when neither knows what they are doing. A prop is like a gun, always consider the switch is on or the gun is loaded.

Jerry M. Davis

The chief pilot of the flying club I was in claimed he hand propped an IO540 on a Baron.

I watched him prop smaller engines by simply pulling it through underneath slowly then get out of the way.

He flew the B29 weather plane in the 1950s.

My father's first home welding job was to add a one foot extension to the hand crank for the Allis Calmers WD tractor.

On first use he pulled easily enough to turn the crank and immediately received the event of being tossed over to the other side of tractor because he had not reached the exhaust cycle of the rotation.

I stayed with the C model and far away from the WD.

0.02

> I have propped airplanes since I was 14 years old, I'm 77 now and still hand prop my 1946 Piper J-3.
> The main thing is to not let a stranger prop your airplane because he volunteers, he might not know the first thing about what he needs to do. Make sure the person in the plane that your are turning the prop for knows what he is doing also.
>
> Jerry M. Davis

I was a little concerned when you put me in the front seat of the J-3 and said here is the brake and the kill switch and then proceeded to hand prop!

All turned out well though!

SHG

Come on now Shelby, I also probably told you that if anything happened that you though was not right to simply turn the Magneto Switch off. Before I spun the prop I also gave the aircraft a push back and forth by the prop to see if the brakes were on.

That photo was taken with the 75 hp engine installed. It now has a just overhauled 90 hp engine. The engine has a little over thirty hours since a complete major overhaul, just about everything is new except the case, rods and lifters. They were all checked by an overhaul facility and were good as new specs. That engine should outlast me. Was going to fly it today but it's raining here. I'm a fair weather pilot now days.

Jerry M. Davis

I hand propped a Champ many times by myself. Chain down the tail, crack the throttle, from behind on the right side, swing the prop, close the throttle, unchain the tail. Get in and fly away.

The PIC sits in the front seat.