Ode To

Round Engines

A turbine is too simple-minded, it has no mystery. The air travels through it in a straight line and doesn't pick up any of the pungent fragrance of engine oil or pilot sweat. Anybody can start a turbine. You just need to move a switch from "off" to "start" and then remember to move it back to "on" after a while. My PC is harder to start.

    "Cranking" a round engine requires skill, finesse and style. You have to seduce it into starting. On some aircraft, the pilots aren't even allowed to do it.

    "Turbines" start by whining for a while - just like the wife- then give a little "poof" and start whining a little louder.

Round engines give a satisfying rattle-rattle, click, click, bang, more rattles, a couple of coughs, another bang, a big matcho belch or two, more clicks, clouds of pungent blue smoke that gives the "greenie" PC brigade more palputations than their dull, empty, meaningless little lives can handle and finally a serious low-pitched roar.

We live for that - its a bloke thing.

When you start a round engine, your mind is engaged and you can concentrate on the flight ahead. Starting a turbine is like flicking on a ceiling fan - useful, but hardly exciting. When you have started a round engine successfully your spectators have a look on their faces as if they have at long last discovered the meaning of life.

Turbines breed complacency and boredom. A round engine at speed looks and sounds like it is going to blow up at any minute. This helps concentrate the mind.

Turbines don't have enough to fiddle with on a long flight. Turbines smell like an out of control kerosene factory.

Round engines smell like God intended engines to smell!

- Anonymous