Firstly, this is an old FAA video of an actual hand propping accident, the one guy gets banged up,
fortunately not fatal . . . LiveLeak Video.
N1279W?
The Texas Taildragger!
The pax may have no experience flying, but she could ace turns around a point on the practical!
Hop on that things back and you will be a good bull rider. 
I can remember two hand prop occasions I’ve been involved with, the first I was 15 and flying gliders, a friend of mine was handproping a tow plane and the pilot wasn’t on the brakes and it immediately came towards him, he immediately dropped to the side and missed the prop arc, although not by much.
I’ve only had to have a hand prop one time. It was a real cold day and it wouldn’t crank, a guy came out and said he’d hand prop it for me, we went through the procedure and how we’d do it ahead of time, but it still made me a little nervous.
Yet another reason why those guys in the early days of flying , namely WW1 have my respect, with our electric starters and GPS, and (in the fighter pilots cases) radar guided weapons , i.e. less close dog fighting. …
those guys were truely fearless!
Yep, I can relate.
My first and only experience with hand propping was the L2 I flew as passenger recently. It didn’t have an ignition switch in the plane, it only started by hand propping it.
My feet just about needed CPR from jamming on the brakes so hard until the pilot said my controls.
absolutely! I had Piper engraved on the bottom of my Reeboks! 
AC I have hand propped.
J-3
C150
C206
C207
BC-12 (on floats)
PA-18
And the grand daddy of them all-
DHC-2 standing on the float while 4 Pax sat wide eyed wondering if they were going to make it back to the cruse ship.
screw the cruise ship, was our flyboy going to be nothing more than a box of fish food to throw off the side of the ship! Thats a monster prop!
(don’t take this the wrong way guys) been a while since I’ve been around a Beaver, isn’t the top to high to reach correctly? Did you have to crank it from the bottom going left?
screw the cruise ship, was our flyboy going to be nothing more than a box of fish food to throw off the side of the ship! Thats a monster prop!
(don’t take this the wrong way guys) been a while since I’ve been around a Beaver, isn’t the top to high to reach correctly? Did you have to crank it from the bottom going left?
I was reading the FAA’s pilot manual and it mentions hand propping in there. I love how nonchalant it is about it though, it says basically: “If you perform this on an icy surface, you could slip into the propeller.”
If you slip into a propeller there’s a pretty good chance you won’t have to worry about hand propping or flying airplanes anymore…
We had the 3 bladed props on the Beav- Also you stand on the float just aft of the prop and pull down. it’s a very low compression engiene so it took FOREVER to get that R-985 to fire. It was beer 30 when I got home from that trip.
The only airplane I couldn’t get to fire was a Baron, does anyone know if that has a shower of sparks system?
My grandpa had a problem starting his v-tail Bonanza once on a cold day so he went outside to pull the prop through and loosen the oil (?)… anyway he left everything on and of course it fired up and taxiied itself across the ramp, across a taxiway, and into a ditch. He recalled later that it was such a surprise to him, he (obviously) didn’t expect it to fire and came rather close to losing a limb or a head to the prop. It was awhile before that plane flew again.
I used to have a Founier RF4D, the only way to start it was to hand prop, you stood in front of the left wing, primed it once, set throttle about 1/4 in, set brake, and pulled 6 times, turned mag switch on, and one more pull started it, volkswagon engine (rectimo?) starts pretty easy
“His girlfriend was taken to the hospital in a state of extreme shock”
I’ll bet she was!