[Richard Flanders]

When I'm going to be out in some really remote location where it's not below about -10F and will need to preheat somehow I drain my engine oil into two 1-gal Coleman fuel cans and store them inside the cabin or wall tent. On departure day I crack the can lids a touch and put them on the wood stove until I can just barely keep my hands on the cans, which would be about 200deg, then run out dump it in quickly, hand prop it over 50times with the mixture pulled, then give it gas and hand prop it to start it. This is the "old" way of doing it and is still the very best. I am the only pilot that I know of that still uses this tried and true method. At least you get the cam and crankshaft journals and the wrist pins lubed before startup. If it's below -10deg I drain the oil and use a Red Dragon propane-fired heater to preheat the whole engine. This is essential when it's -30 or -40 for sure. Below -40 and it has to be pretty essential for me to be somewhere for me to even think of starting the plane. Going to look for an overdue pilot friend in the middle of the night in mid winter comes to mind for one time I did it. He was stuck on a glacier at 7000'. They couldn't take off due to deep snow and spent so much time packing a strip with skis that his engine was way too cold to start. We found him and radioed in to the rescue coord center that he was ok and I flew in a Red Dragon the following day and we got him going. Others use everything from MSR or single-burner coleman stoves to catalytic heaters for preheating. Extreme cold weather flying is a real project.