I'm new to this as well, with only five flights up till now. Every time I start my engine it runs backwards. I know immediately that it's running backwards because being in front of the plane, I can feel the prop's blast on me.

At first I was pretty amazed that the engine could actually run backwards (clockwise), especially since I flip the prop counter-clockwise with the chicken stick. My instructor never did stop the engine, he simply played with the throttle and managed to reverse (forward?) the engine into turning counter-clockwise once again. I learned the trick as well, just idle the throttle and then firewall it a few times (quickly). Works for me!

My engine is an OS .46FX