Once had a conversation with a guy at Leavesden (where they used to make Gnomes etc.) who told me that "Sea King engines were life-limited based on cycles", so I asked what a cycle was and he said "one start, once up to TO power back to idle and a shut down".
I expressed my concern that we actually do more than one excursion up to TO power in a typical flight.
"Oh!" he said, "how many times do you pull that in a flight?".
I told him that in a general handling training flight it could be 5 to 10 times, maybe more and doing the ASW 'dunking' job in nil wind in the tropics or even a warm European day it could be the same. He was dumbstruck - but nothing changed. That was 35 years ago - has anything changed since ?
G
