No, not really for once. It's actually the exact way I run my G51 in a competition CL stunt plane where we need total reliability and it's a point of honour to get one flick starts .

But just about everything I do is supposed to be wrong. There's no nitro which everyone says helps an engine to start. There's a lot of oil (there's a genuine reason for this but beyond the scope of this discussion). The plug happened to be the first one I picked out of my junk box which worked perfectly so no need to mess with a good thing (ok, maybe I was lucky there ). The engine is inverted which everyone knows makes them hard to start.

So why does it start so easily? I think there are 2 reasons. The first is that I know the needle is set in a proper range and it's set rich. An engine will always run if a bit rich. But I think the most important thing is that from trial and error I've found the exact way the engine needs to be primed. Not just how much fuel to get into it but how to spread that fuel through the engine and how the engine feels when the prime is just right. This is something you can never do with an electric starter and it's why I taught my son how to hand start first before letting him use an electric starter.

With jester's engine (the way I read it) he's done the rich break in with no problem starting it. But at the end of the rich running (4 stroking?) he's immediately tuned for just below peak and this is when the problem started. I suspect it's got more to do with the idle setting now.