Venom Cartridge Start - Vermont, USA - 1980's

[petermcleland]

I used to enjoy the AVPIN starter on the Hunter FGA9...It was such an exquisite sound :flying:

[Chris Trott]

I want to see video or film of a B-52 Cart Start on all 8. That had to be a sight.

[phixer]

I used to enjoy the AVPIN starter on the Hunter FGA9...It was such an exquisite sound :flying:

And the smell was memorable too. I distinctly recall my first whiff on the old Vic (HMS Victorious) whilst preparing Vixen FAW2s for a sortie and the Wessex 1's starting up with AVPIN. That mingling with the smell from the ship's bakery wafting over the flight deck is one of those never forgotten experiences.

Later I recall one of the chaps on Station Flight putting a couple of gallons of AVPIN (a gallon being the largest permissible quantity in one container) in his car's fuel tank. He had thought that the two one-gallon cans left at the end of the hangar were a donation from the Tiger Moth AVGAS supply not knowing that we had a couple of visiting RAF Hunters.

Our Hunters had cartridge starters. Probably one reason why my right shoulder gives me gype these days having many a time reached up to the triple breach starter to change those big brass cartridges, even bigger than those fitted to centrifugal compressor engines of yore.

The exhaust from the Hunter starters was just a few inches away from a fuel overflow pipe below which was customarily placed a small bin (half a 40 gallon drum on a wheeled trolley) to catch fuel overflows during and after refueling.

The keenness of a CPO about to carry out an engine vibration run check was nearly his undoing. I was on my way out to the aircraft with a CO2 fire extinguisher in each hand when horrified I realised that a start was about to happen before I had got there and I noted the fuel bin still in place. I put down an extinguisher and frantically tried to attract the CPO's attention. I was too late and with amazement watched the starter exhaust vent into the fuel bin, creating a cloud of vaporized AVCAT which was promptly sucked into the intakes.

My frantic signal to 'cut' was superfluous as Chiefie had realised something was amiss as the JPT went off the clock and I sprinted the final few paces with the extinguishers and about to activate one when I realised that there was no fire in the now empty bin. All the heat had been absorbed in vaporising the fuel and any fire had been sucked out.

There is a story oft told of the fire department being called out on a US air station when a visiting squadron of Sea Hawks (or was it Sea Venoms) did a mass start. The Yanks had never seen anything like it.