Originally Posted by
rigpiggy
The reason to hold the props is in cold environment, you will damage the gearbox, and or blow prop seals when they come out of feather. The standard arctic first flight is f/o holds the rhs, startup run until oil temp comes up, battery charges, run over to lhs, does the next start, crawls in through back.
Though the preferred method is to run a janitrol through an exhaust stack, not always available
I'm not sure. In the cold season, I always overnighted in locations where the engines were plugged in with blankets wrapped around the engines to keep them warm. Only tried to hold a prop once on start and it seemed like it would be difficult to do so for very long with the engine spooled up to idle.