I have a stand by compressor for our sand/media blasting that has the Wisconsin V4 air cooled engine that was used on all sorts of equipment for years. It has a magneto so no battery needed. I roll the engine over till I feel it coming up on compression on a cylinder and then give it a quick pull; usually 4 or 5 pulls fires it off. If you really want a cranking experience go to a tractor show and have someone let you crank an old Poppin John. You open the petcock on each cylinder to bleed off compression, turn the fuel valve on ti gas starts to run out and then with both hands pull on the FLYWHEEL to start. A junkyard near where I grew up had a crawler tractor that they dug a pit, pushed a car into it, and then run across the car to crush it. I think it was from the Panama Canal building era and had a flywheel that the top half was fully exposed. The flywheel had angled holes in it to insert an old Ford driveshaft and pull on to start. There was always several pretzeled up driveshafts laying around from the engine kicking back. I wonder how OSHA would view this.
