Tonight I started my BME 50 for the first time. After some careful set-up, and checking everything twice and 3 times the moment had come.

A few slow cranks with iginition off until I had fuel in the line up to the carb. Choke on, ignition on, 2 more cranks and then "pop". After that I told my helper(Don), it's going to start in a few flips. 3 flips later it was idling away. Very nice for a new engine. Very nice. I let it run its first RPM's of life for about a minute, let it cool, then another few runs of a minute each, and let cool, the next runs were for 3 minutes, then cool off, I let it run about 5 minutes the last run, and its starting first flip when warm. It' a kitten, until it's opened up a touch, then I get a glimpse of the potential it has, holy smoke, it's wanting to pull the table.

Over the next few nights I'm going to run it about like this, maybe slightly longer, not to long though, I have good neighbors, and I like being a good neighbor too, but these short runs will get things at least starting to work in, until Saturday when I take it to our flying field and get some good time on it.
This is going to be one strong engine, and so far it's proven to be very easy starting, and very easy handling.