Yoav,

Essentially what the anti-knock glow drivers do is delay igniting the glow plug until you've got the motor spinning with the starter. If you use a regular glow driver which ignites the plug right away and then put the starter on the motor - the motor will backfire right away (I'm not sure exactly why). However, if you take a regular glow driver which has a switch on it such as the Radio South one and you have enougth hands (don't try this at the field if you are by yourself ) - one or two hands to hold the plane, one hand to hold the starter and to start spinning the motor and then another hand to flip the glow driver switch to on while the prop is turning then the problem goes away. This really takes 2 people to start a motor.

This is easily corrected by using a glow driver with a timer on it that gives one enough time to turn the glow driver on, grab hold of the plane with your one hand and then with your remaining hand to take the starter and to start spinning the prop. Just the fact the motor is spinning when power is applied to the glow plug will stop the motor from backfiring.

-Derek