A different use for Black Powder (2025)

Saw something like that in the old flight of the pheonix movie

A friend whose an aircraft mechanic said it used to be pretty common

Howdy

The most common type of starters used to start aircraft radial piston engines in the 1930s and 1940s were the Coffman starters. They did not use Black Powder, they used Cordite. Also known as 'shotgun starters' they were 4 gauge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65qrzgbTTcQ

That was to get the rotation started? insted of hand pushing the prop?

lol what a trip i remember watching videos and stuff and thinking wow that first turn is SUPER rich. I never thought of real black powder being used as a kick start haha.

Why not use carbid like the miners used in their flashlight?

As an EOD guy i destroyed thousands of jet engine starter carts.

Jet engine starter cartridges were used in some models of the B-52 and F-4 aircraft. This is a jet engine starter. The large electrically initiated starter cartridge fits in the can to the left.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jet-Engine-...d=100011&prg=1005&rk=1&rkt=5&sd=261343428378&

The Australian Canberra still uses jet engine starter carts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9fkmqPHTDE

lol what a trip i remember watching videos and stuff and thinking wow that first turn is SUPER rich. I never thought of real black powder being used as a kick start haha.

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Read what I wrote again. The shells used to start radial engines were not Black Powder. They were loaded with Cordite.

I was once told that black powder is used as propellant for ejecting pilots out of jet fighters. Can anyone definitely confirm or refute that?

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I doubt it. Ejection seats went through a long period of development, there were many different types. But I suspect they all used solid rocket propellant, not Black Powder. By the way, I just finished reading The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe. This is the book the movie was patterned after. He goes through quite a description of Chuck Yeager bailing out of a NF-104 after his engine flamed out. If you have seen the movie, it is one of the last scenes. Wolfe goes into detail how the ejection seat got tangled in the lines to Yeager's chute, spilling burning residual rocket fuel into his lines and then the seat crashed into Yeager's helmet, cracking his visor and getting the smoldering fuel into his face. It was pretty clearly not Black Powder, it was solid propellent rocket fuel.

Thanks, Chawbaccer. I remember that from the old TV show. I always wondered what was going on there.

And thanks, Pancho. Great thread.