An old friend of mine, Neal Elve, is the one that set that 3350 up years ago. He set it up to test windows in "high wind situations." He said that the businesses of Ft. Worth (where he was at the time) didn't like the noise he was making with it in the afternoons, right in the downtown area, so he was told to start doing the engine runs at 2 a.m. He said what was funny about it is that one night, he had trouble getting it started, but when it did, he had a stack fire going pretty good out of the PRTs on the engines. When the engine finally caught, it shot a flame about 15 feet in the air, out the exhaust stacks.
He said he was incredibly embarrassed, as there were twenty or thirty executives there to see these special windows hold up to the wind the engine was generating. Nonetheless, he continued with the engine run and all went well. However, to his surprise, once the engine was shut down, the gaggle of potential customers for the windows came over to him and said, "Do it again! That was cool!!!"
So from that point on, Neal said he'd be sure to overprime the engine for each start...just to get a "little extra fire out of her." He added, "Man, we sold more windows with those night runs than you could imagine!"
Sadly, Neal passed away in July 2007. I got the word as I was doing a pre-flight on Ol' 927 for our flight to present it at Oshkosh for the first time. Neal really was a neat ol' guy. I sure do miss him.
Gary
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