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Engine restart after fire?


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Am I wasting my time trying to restart an engine after extinguishing the fire? IRL I would assume there is permanent damage and immediately RTB on one engine, which is what I do in the sim. Is the permanent damage modeled in the sim, or is it possible to restart the engine?

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Am I wasting my time trying to restart an engine after extinguishing the fire? IRL I would assume there is permanent damage and immediately RTB on one engine, which is what I do in the sim. Is the permanent damage modeled in the sim, or is it possible to restart the engine?

 

Depends on what caused the fire. If the damage is too bad it will either not restart or it will catch fire again so it’s a risk

 

 

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I have found successful restarts very rare. That may say more about me than the sim!

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It depends. See this thread:

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=111058

 

If you just use the fuel cutoff (T handle) switch, the only thing it does is that it cuts fuel and shuts the engine down, possibly snuffing out the fire. However, you may also have to use the extinguishing agent if the fire isn't put out by the T handle alone. In that case, you can't really restart the engine since it's full of that foamy chemical extinguisher agent.

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Wouldnt that extinguishing agent be evacuated in flight while the engine is windmilling? If the blades are spinning, the compressor is compressing, the igniters are igniting and you can add fuel...

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@Charly Owl...thanks for that tidbit I missed in the manual regarding T-handle.

I didn't realize that what the T-handle function was on it's own. I see an engine fire and instinctively pull the handle and immediately apply foam.

Since I've never had an engine fire that wasn't the result of enemy fire I never broke down the process.

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I have never successfully restarted an engine after a fire, despite having the procedure down when I flew the hog a lot. Generally it’s on fire for a reason, so I just put the fire out, check your fuel situation for leaks and cut pumps/x feed as necessary and fly home on one.

 

And remember to check your landing gear

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One common training tool for the in flight relight decision is to look for the 3 F’s - Fire, FOD, or Frozen spool(s). If one of those occurred (battle damage counts as FOD, bird strikes being a common consideration also) it may be best to secure the engine and RTB.

 

Also, with all respect to Charly_Owl, I would be very surprised if the extinguishing agent is a foam. Every jet I am familiar with uses a Halon type gas for extinguishing. The -10 for the A10A doesn’t appear to specify- can any of the A10 SMEs with RL experience shed some light here with regards to the specific agent?

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I figure fire destroys fuel injectors, lines, cooks oil to a tar goop, and clogs fuel pumps from feed tank. Whatever damage engine has sustained , that required shutdown and extinguisher , is still there . So relight is either a bad idea, or it won't work, or both. So don't do it. The only, that I know of in DCS: A-10C,cause to inflight relight is if you flew upside more then 10-15 seconds, and used up all fuel in the feed tank, thus starving the engines. So you need to relight port first, stbd second.

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Terrible idea if you had an engine on (uncontrollable) fire. This is especially true if you use the extinguishers. The idea is to cut the fuel to the engines until you land, so no more fuel will be used to keep that fire going, introducing fuel again when you already had the engine on fire is the same idea as trying to put the fire out with gasoline. You don't know if the electrical system has a short, you don't know the overall condition of the engine, so no, that's a bad idea.

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You can absolutely restart an engine after a fire, not supposed to 9/10 times but you absolutely can.

 

Sometimes you get restarts where the engine blows itself out and can't sustain it's combustion, usually after a few rinse and repeats you can get it spinning back up with ~40%-70% of its power.

 

Much much easier to do with split throttles as there's less juggling of throttle modifiers.

 

I get truly baffled when I see folk, even prominent youtubers saying they've never managed a restart in the A-10C.

Honestly I've lost count of the amount of times I've restarted an engine in flight, not everytime I grant you but more often than not I'm confident in getting an engine fired back up after a hit.

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For some reason every single time I get hit with anything I always seem to lose at least one engine. If I still have one good engine, no biggie. Secure the dead engine and divert to the nearest friendly airfield.

 

Losing both engines is another story. After dumping stores, and starting the APU, I will try a relight if the fire is out. I have never been able to get an engine back up to full operating condition but I have had some luck getting one back to idle and idle thrust is better than no thrust. I know we can always punch out but I typically try to get the plane on the ground. Roads and open fields can be your friend.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I was enjoying some free flight yesterday and decided to hang out inverted for the first time. After 5-10 seconds of flying inverted, both engines quit. So what exactly are the fuel boost pumps doing? I wasn’t expecting this at all. I know this would happen in the Cessna 152 I fly IRL, but in an A-10? I couldn’t get them restarted after trying a few things.

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  • 2 weeks later...
You can absolutely restart an engine after a fire, not supposed to 9/10 times but you absolutely can.

 

Sometimes you get restarts where the engine blows itself out and can't sustain it's combustion, usually after a few rinse and repeats you can get it spinning back up with ~40%-70% of its power.

 

 

 

Same, every now and again, whether by APU, or fuel override and manual restart, I can get an approximate 40%-70% of power, with some fan speed built up. Say one in eight or so. Really depends on how much altitude I have, how much overall damage there is before I attempt. All things being relatively calm, I will attempt it, and rewarded sometimes with a little extra juice to get home. :thumbup:

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For some reason every single time I get hit with anything I always seem to lose at least one engine. If I still have one good engine, no biggie. Secure the dead engine and divert to the nearest friendly airfield.

 

Losing both engines is another story. After dumping stores, and starting the APU, I will try a relight if the fire is out. I have never been able to get an engine back up to full operating condition but I have had some luck getting one back to idle and idle thrust is better than no thrust. I know we can always punch out but I typically try to get the plane on the ground. Roads and open fields can be your friend.

 

Well if your typical assailant is a MANPADS or any other IR weapon loss of an engine is to be expected: DCS models heatseekers as having a preference for homing in on the exhaust if it is visible to the missile, so most rear aspect IR shots against A-10s take out an engine (or both). MANPADS (and the R-60 AAM, which is so small that it might as well be an air launched MANPADS tbh) make this particularly clear because their teeny-tiny warheads often just blow up the engine without seriously hurting anything else.

 

Can't account for radar guided weapons or guns though.

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