Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 9:50 AM

Subject: once seen, never forgotten

 

When I was ten years old in 1952, my family went to Alaska to spend the summer with Bud Helmericks, who had camps both at Niglik Point on the north coast, and at Takahula Lake in the Brooks Range. After driving to Fairbanks up the Alaska Highway (littered as it then was with apparently undamaged but discarded tires - all stone-bruised), we flew by Wien DC-3 to Bettles Field. Sitting at a table in the post building there was a man, bending over documents. THis was our introduction to arctic flying - this man, a bush pilot operating a red Norseman on floats, had just flown out four bodies from a recent crash. When he had finished his work, he went out to his aircraft to depart. I was fascinated by the details of the routine process that followed. The Pratt & Whitney R-1340 engine was equipped with an inertia starter - something I'd never  heard of before. Instead of directly turning over the engine with a powerful electric motor (which is how auto engines are started) this starter uses a small, very high-speed electric motor to accelerate a small flywheel. Once the flywheel is spinning at high speed, the pilot operates a clutch that connects it to the airplane's engine (through suitable gearing). The stored energy in the flywheel is enough to turn the engine a couple of times. I stood on the gravel bar, fascinated as I heard the many seconds of ascending whine as the starter accelerating motor spun up the flywheel. Then there was a streak of gear noise as the clutch engaged and the engine turned and fired but then coughed to a stop. Then the whole process was repeated. This time the engine started, its prop blowing away the usual cloud of oily smoke that always accompanies the start-up of radial engines. It was wonderful theater that has never left my awareness.

 

After warm-up and power check, he flew away. Some few years later he disappeared on another flight and was never heard of again. It was supposed that he'd had to make an emergency landing somewhere, most likely on a semi-frozen lake, and had broken through the ice and become part of one of those deep alpine lakes.

 

Years later, watching the movie "Casablanca", I noticed that the Lockheed twin, in which the heroine and her partisan husband fly away in the last scene, has two different types of starters on its two engines. The first engine is started with an inertia starter just like the one I'd listened to in 1952 - probably because it requires less battery power. The second engine starts with a direct-cranking starter - probably because once the first engine is running there is plentiful electricity with which to operate it.

 

Kevin Cameron