Full power outage in Spain and Portugal

Re:Full power outage in Spain and Portugal by iancmceachern on Monday April 28, 2025 @10:16PM (#43828129)

I understand some old radial airplane engines were started with what were essentially shotgun cartridges

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Re:Full power outage in Spain and Portugal by pacificmint on Monday April 28, 2025 @11:11PM (#43828379)

They’re called Coffman engine starters [1].

Random fact: Those starters are a plot point in the 1965 film The Flight of the Phoenix, where the protagonists are trying to start a plane that’s stranded in the Sahara, but only have a small supply of starter cartridges left.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffman_engine_starter

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Re:Full power outage in Spain and Portugal by iancmceachern on Monday April 28, 2025 @11:16PM (#43828404)

Love that movie!

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Re:Full power outage in Spain and Portugal by _whiteCaps_ on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @01:05AM (#43828829)

Not just radials. The Napier Sabre H24 engine in Typhoons used cartridges as well.

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Re:Full power outage in Spain and Portugal by swiftcoder on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @02:04AM (#43829129)

I lived for a while on a sailboat equipped with an ancient Saab tractor engine (8 whole horsepower!). Was designed for cartridge starts in cold weather, though someone had fitted an electric starter by the time I saw it

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