Originally Posted by
alarkyokie
The J-57 birds had "cartridge start" capabilities. Explosive cartridge produced
gas that spun a two stage turbine that produced enough pressure to get one engine lit. A mechanical marvel!
The TF-33s on the RCs had either a cartridge start or a generator. We had three generators and one cartridge starter. Absent the cartridge start, we had no bare-base capability (reference absence of APU). That was one of the major hurdles to converting to CFM-56s. I don't know what the ultimate solution was.
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