I don’t know about cranking by hand, but there were a number of large aircraft that used electric inertia starters. The Boeing B-29 Super Fortress is one example. So instead of some poor sap having to go spin up this heavy weight by cranking a handle, an electric motor did the cranking, then the clutch would engage and spin the engine just like you see here. In the B-29’s case, power to spin the electric inertia starters came from an Auxiliary Power Unit (APU). The B-29 was the first airplane to have an APU.

@@singleproppilot Many thanks, can anyone else add anything?

@@paulmurphy42 Yes I worked for Braniff Airlines and many times four or five of us would join hands and - biggest guy first, littlest guy grabbing the prop - we would all run and pull sideways (from starboard to port) on the bottom prop blade. Probably 30 times from 1951 to 1964 we had to hand-prop R-2000s on DC-4's. R-2800s on DC-6s, and R-3350 Turbo Compounds on DC-7Cs. Usually just two big guys would pull it through with the mags cold during priming (the "suck-in" phase) but anytime the mags were hot it was the whole chain at a dead run to so that in case it started we would be away from it and the hand-joining was to prevent Shorty from being sucked back in to the prop-arc. Once we got one engine to run it's generator would eventually charge up the ship's 32 volt battery bank enough to electrically start the next and so on. Hurry up and ask me any other questions because I am 92, capiche ?

@@patrickshaw8595 Wow, that's a great answer Patrick, thanks! I didn't think any team had ever hand propped a DC7! But what do you think is the biggest engine/aircraft that could be hand propped by one man alone?

When I was young and wiry I hand-propped an R-1830 Pratt mounted in a test cell solo once. That was at aircraft mechanic's school on a bet. The 3-bladed prop lost a blade a few seconds after startup and it disappeared. Running pretty good power with only two blades the prop hub's center was describing about a 20 inch circle despite being solidly mounted to about a 5 ton concrete block. I didn't know which way to run and I'm told I did a deer in the headlights impression. The nose casing for the gear reduction and whatnot broke off and the entire thing also took off straight up (thank you Jesus) and landed about 25 seconds later a quarter mile away in a huge parking lot with a clang.

The control he touches behind the crank handle engages the starter clutch which cranks the engine. What you don’t see because it’s off screen is that there has to be someone in the cockpit operating the magneto switches and throttle. Hand propping is technically possible but not really practical on an engine this large. That’s why they saw fit to include an inertia starter. It’s easier and much safer.

@@singleproppilot Excellent answer, thanks! But what's the formal name for it?

@@paulmurphy42 I honestly don’t know. Nomenclature varies so much from airplane to airplane, it’s hard to keep it all straight.

@@singleproppilot Ok, fair enough, thanks for trying!

@@singleproppilot I have solo-cranked R-1830 Pratt Whitney engines as part of a three man team, and R-3350 once as part of a five man team. I could still prop a an R985 and when I was 25 could prop an R1340. Solo.

Not too bad - have you ever seen a chain of men grabbing a propeller blade and running to crank a 3500 hp radial aircraft engine ? I have. Near-suicidal. Only guys without children were permitted to be the last guy in the chain in case he got sucked into the prop.

Its friggin awesome I tell you hwat :P For engines that are in the range of a car engine, averaging a tenth or a ninth of the displacement and/or inertial mass, the inertia starter would be maybe almost ten times heavier than the tiny lightweight starter motor? Its far too expensive to include as vehicle mechanical bulletproofing though, don't want cars to last too long eh? Otherwise nobody would buy new cars to feed money into the industry XD

kzbin.info/www/bejne/b4KmlYN_Z5etY68

That's funny.

They had to keep it close to the guans blender

They could have put it at balls level so that if you forget to remove the crank, you won't do that ever again

@@jimm3093 🤣🤣🤣

That five ton truck isn't gasoline powered...It's a M818 and the M812's-M820's all came with a naturally aspirated NHC-250 from Cummins. The transmissions in these trucks actually do have synchronized gearing,otherwise he would have to double clutch.The deuce and a halfs are the same way.

@@Slim_Slid Pardon me. Some of the older gas powered 5 ton trucks have been converted to either Mack diesel or the Multifuel engines, yet still had the direct drive 5th gear trans instead of replacing them with the 5th gear overdrive trans like the Cummins NHC-250 powered ones that you owned, according to my sources.

@@Orvz475 That's the M51-M543 you're referring to,which had the Continental R602 when originally being debuted.Once the M51A1-M543A1 came out a few years later then they had the EDNT-673 Thermodyne from Mack and were manufactured at Mack.Later on they came out with the M51A2-M543A2 which were multi-fuel powered from Continental,Hercules,and White Motors.Most of them had the LDS-465 because of the torque.The LDS-465 is 175 HP/447 TQ compared to the LDT-465 at 135 HP/330 TQ that many of the two and a half ton trucks had as A2's when the LDT-427 in the A1's was 140 HP/340 TQ. For the M51-M543 they had the Eaton 6352 and the M812-M820 had the Spicer 6453.

RomeoPapaCharlie No lightspeed?

its a "high wear" component that gets maintenance often, we had a crop duster with a starter of this sort.

@@TheWolfiet how many starts on average before it needed to get adjusted/replaced?

@@jaek_898 hard to say, generally you just didn't worry about it unless it started slipping much like a clutch in a car transmission.

Mike Goodman taz approves.

@@vector6977 I'd be the Millennium Falcon doesn't though, since this plane started and that spaceship didn't XD

It's a spring almost like what's in. Clock

Maybe a close second to hand propping, but the sound is better.

no battery, we start engine like real man.

Reminded me when i was pushstarting my yugo all alone 😄

How about driving a 10 ton?

Just like riding a bike