"Julian Scarfe" wrote
As part of a "debugging" process yesterday, chasing a collection of minor
issues, we tested the feathering of the left engine of our Twin Comanche,
which had appeared significantly slower than the right one. It seemed to
feather fine, with the prop stopping in about 10 seconds.

That doesn't sound fine to me. Actually, it sounds quite slow. Mine
feather in less than half that time, worst case.

Unfortunately, it didn't restart fine. I was very close to a "uh, we've
painted ourselves into a corner, here" call to ATC and a real engine-out
arrival, when at the 6th attempt in a 1000 fpm dive at 130 KIAS it finally
came back to life. Fortunately we'd been careful to get ourselves plenty of
altitude before the shutdown.

1000 fpm dive? 130 KIAS? I must be missing something - were you
using the starter? Was the starter not able to crank the engine?

Any tips on air restarts from the other PA30 drivers out there? I think we
followed the POH to the letter, in particular, mixture RICH for the start.
Is that really best? Why does it differ from the ground start procedure?

No clue. Unless I've had the engine shut down long enough for the
CHT's to drop to ambient, I use the hot start procedure.

Prop full forward
Throttle full open
Mixture full rich
Boost pump on for 3 seconds
Mixture to idle cut-off
With one hand, crank starter
Once engine catches, advance mixture with second hand while pulling
back on throttle with third hand. Millions of Martians can't be wrong


No, seriously - once the engine catches, it will idle and you have
time to set the throttle and mixture as necessary. I usually set it
for 11 inches manifold to warm up, since that gives approximately zero
thrust.

It should never be necessary to dive for airspeed - if the starter
can't crank the engine then something is seriously wrong.

If the engine was warm and flooded, then starting with mixture rich
can take a long, long time.

Michael