^ Me too.
I have a primitive preference for R-r-r-r-r-Pop! r-r-r Smoke puff rrrr Bangrrrrrr flamerrrr Popopopopclank Bang big gout of smoke rrrrr bang! P-tocka-p-tocka-ptockptocka ptocka rumblerumblerumble, as opposed to a mere whine whine whine WHINE ROAR.
DC-3 Startup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23iCuMl00nALet alone with four radial engines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ_RSCw8v7UNow thass what Ah'm talkin' about.
Terry
ETA: Decided not to put this bit of trivia in this post, then changed my mind.
I watch a lot of those radial startups --what the hell, I'm retired --and I always wondered what all the clanking was as the engine rotated. Was it a bad bearing? Or what? Seemed so common it couldn't have been a bad bearing in all of them.
It's quite obvious in the second vid from about 0:47 till the engine starts, while they're cranking that first engine and everything else is relatively quiet.
Turns out after some poking around that it's the "impulse magneto" which makes all the clanking.
Here's how it works>
With the engine turning over slowly from the starter, the magneto magnets aren't moving fast enough past the magneto coils to generate a reliable decent spark.
So what they do is put a slip-cam in the magneto so that as its shaft rotates, it builds up tension in a rotary spring until the cam slips off its pawl and the shaft suddenly spins real fast for ~half a revolution so a good spark is generated.
This is repeated for each cylinder in firing order until the engine is rotating fast enough on its own to generate a good spark from the magneto. The "clank" is from the cam suddenly being released from its pawl.
This "impulse" system appears in both magnetos. Thus the clanking noise from the engines on starting.