There's something rather amiss with this thread - as has been noted, so many posts have been deleted it makes it very difficult to get any sense of context. For whatever reason, the Pprune forum software no longer supports the 'quote' button which provided an easy means of quoting an existing post, complete with attribution; however, for future reference, opening a manually crafted quote with quote=Username will at least provide the attribution, but still means you have to manually cut and paste whatever muppetry has boiled your wee for it to make any sense.
It was, however, distinctly brass monkeys this morning. My cunning plan of priming the Pitts and then allowing *three* minutes for the fuel to evaporate initially worked a treat as it started immediately, but then my fundamental Baldrick nature kicked in, opened the mixture too quickly, rich cut, splutter, stop, and that was all the battery had to offer. The Yak started without much protest, but de-icing the airframe was like de-icing my freezer - I only do it once a year, it takes sodding hours and all the crap that was nicely deep frozen mysteriously transfers itself to my clothing.
Still, I did manage to aviate three days in a row, a decent enough way to round off the Christmas and New Year break. Office tomorrow....on reflection, it still be rather de-icing the Yak than stuck in an office in Slough.