[Stu Jackson]

The older Catalina 30 Tech Notes made great and repeated emphasis on the use of this lever. It made me gag, because they missed the much more important issue of having a reliable electrical system to assure that the engine started properly. They kept saying: If the engine is hard to start, use the decompression lever. Instead of saying: check your batteries, charge them properly, check the engine ground, check the connections...all that good stuff.

If you do it right, you should never have to use it.