Hi Balus,
Can you really start an Islander with a rope?
Yes you can. I have done it successfully a couple of times and in fact the prop spinners on the NCA islanders had the lip at the base bent flat from the rope crushing it when being pulled like an old lawn mower to get them going.
As the Popp pilot for NCA you were pretty much left to your own resources when it came to a mechanical problem. Usually if something broke at an outport it could take hours, if not a day or two, before some sort of support could be got to you.
As it wasn't a rare occurrence for the starter motor bendix to shear all the drive teeth off (lots of starts on those things) or a crappy battery to die I used to carry a length of rope coiled up and stuffed under the seat and have used it to successfully start an Islander. The biggest problem was hanging on to the rope as the pax would value a piece of rope highly and would try to disappear it regularly. If you asked them for a piece of rope they would duck into the jungle and come back with a piece of vine for you. I have tried the jungle rope to start an islander but it was never strong enough and always broke.
The technique as I remember it was to allow the motor to cool a bit, as hot the compression was too high and they were a bitch to start anyway. Take said piece of rope and wrap it around the base of the spinner hub in front of the prop crossing the first few wraps over so that they locked the rope down onto the spinner. Get as many people as were willing to hang on the rope as possible and brief them through the agent to run and pull the rope at a slight forward angle and not to stop until the rope came free of the prop. Jump in prime it up and get them to go. It would usually take a few goes and the biggest danger was that the guys on the rope would stop when the engine caught and the prop would catch the rope and wrap it around the prop. You'd have to shut down and start again from letting the motor cool down if this happened! The carb'd Islanders were easier to start like this than the fuel injected ones.
It was all pretty funny for the locals as they'd usually done it before and thought it was a great laugh. I used to s#%t myself that they'd walk into the prop if the rope got caught up and was usually very happy to get it done and be gone asap without incident. Fortunately I only had to do it a couple of times and as Murphy was always hanging around in PNG I would usually have a problem like this just after my rope got knicked and get stuck anyway!
