No fiddling with mixture.
TBH, I don't "fiddle" much. Once in and out for prime, in after start, lean for roughly constant EGT during climb, lean to just LOP for cruise, rich for landing.
In a way, the leaning during climb is analogous to fiddling with the power lever during climb... It's just that the climb is much shorter so usually I'll only have to pull the mixture back 2-3 times during the climb. I'm constantly fiddling with the power lever during climb to get at least 95%/115% torque, depending if I'm flying the 850 or 900.
Start? Hit the start button, maybe turn fuel on depending on the turbine you’re flying.
I'm starting to think maybe it's the fact that I'm flying two different planes with somewhat different procedures...
In the 850, there's three power levers and a rocker switch for the starter. Ignition Auto, Boost pump on, starter switch on, check for rotation and oil pressure, at 13%Ng put the condition lever in lo idle, make sure it lights up, make sure it hits 30%Ng in less than 30 seconds, secondaries come on at about 40%, turn the starter switch back off at 50%, condition lever to hi idle at 53%, Ng stabilizes at 69±2%, we have a good start...
It's kinda similar in the 900 except the starter switch is a momentary switch that you hold for two seconds, and the starter will cut itself off automatically at 50%, though you do have to monitor it to make sure it does so. You also don't have a condition lever (or a prop lever), the power lever is like three legs of a stick shift (with "3rd gear" missing). Essentially, the right-hand leg of the h is the condition lever, the center shelf of the h is the prop, the top left is the normal power range and the bottom left is beta/reverse.
No significantly different procedures for cold, kinda cold, really cold, hot, sorta hot. No worries about preheating below 40F. You don’t have to mess with watching EGT and CHT for each cylinder, just watch EGT/ITT and your oil temp occasionally.
Well, generally I leave the Mooney plugged in below 40F... Cold starts are normal, hot starts use your procedure, and the only other thing that varies with temp is how long I prime.
OTOH, in the TBM it's not uncommon for us to be doing a quick-ish turn. An actual quick turn, we really can't do without a GPU, especially in the 850, and many FBOs refuse to give you the GPU on a TBM because they put the power port up at the engine compartment, so the lineman has to get within an arm's length of a spinning prop to unplug it. (I don't like that much either, for that matter.)
Generally, we'll open up the covers and wait for the ITT to come down to about 260C before attempting a start, and we'll wait until it's been spinning for 20 seconds to light it up. We need to have about 20-30 minutes between shutdown and restart, though... And I don't have to worry about that at all in the Mooney, I can shut down and start right back up again if I want/need to.
Yeah on takeoff you have to watch you don’t over torque the engine (or in my case watch for overtemp too). On start you have to scan for hot starts and hung starts. Once you get 100 starts in the starting is second nature.
I've probably got most of that - It just seems like a lot to pay attention to. Or maybe it's just that I'm even more wary because it's a lot easier to cook an engine on the start, and it costs 10x what mine does.
