I have been having an issue with manually starting some of my planes. I can usually get the jets to start without using the autostart. But many of the recips won't fire up unless I use the autostart. I go through all of the start up procedures, make sure there's fuel, the engine is properly primed and the mixture is open. I hit the starter and it cranks for a few seconds and then nothing. I try this several times and it just won't fire. Then I give up and use the autostart and it cranks up immediately. What am I missing here? I also have a couple of planes where the thing won't even crank, like the FSD P-38 and the A2A P-47. They have those centrifugal starters and for some reason I cannot get the thing to spin up and engage.

There is a bug in FSX that sometimes just wont let you do a manual start. A2A mention it somewhere on one of the forums.
I get it in my A2A Spitfire quite a lot.

Just a thought.
I allways start FSX up twice just to make sure the sim gets it all.

Is your battery on?

I forgot that for a long time and was trying to figure out why my lil '-172 just wouldn't start

It might be that the designer made it that way.
I know in the case of the B747 Ready for push back you MUST use the manual start as the auto start will not work. You have to go through a few steps in order to start engines. There are at least six steps you have to go through just to start engines 8-)

some aircraft are in a total checklist needed config. the iris a10 comes to mind. where you have to turn on every system needed to fly.

microsoft has an issue on some aircraft that in order to start the aircraft the prop must spin so fast and so many revolutions for the engine to "catch". or start.

this was written in the aircrafts config file.

Barkingdog wrote on Jan 17^th, 2013 at 7:02pm:

some aircraft are in a total checklist needed config. the iris a10 comes to mind. where you have to turn on every system needed to fly. microsoft has an issue on some aircraft that in order to start the aircraft the prop must spin so fast and so many revolutions for the engine to "catch". or start. this was written in the aircrafts config file.

The good news is that he can edit that right? If it's in the config it shouldn't be too hard to find what it's labelled as in the config.

If you know it, do you mind posting what it would be under in the config?

got the fuel selector set to a fuel tank instead of off? Fuel cutoff switch set properly? Those are the two biggest ones I've seen when I couldn't get a plane to fire....gotta have fuel and a spark to start that engine :)

Bass wrote on Jan 13^th, 2013 at 7:00am:

Just a thought. I allways start FSX up twice just to make sure the sim gets it all.

Twice as in turn on fsx, close fsx, turn on fsx again?