When attempting a flight with a prop aircraft . more often than not the engine will just stop and die on the take-off run, even though I have plenty of fuel. If I manage to get off the ground, I have to try an engine restart using CTL E   Am I missing something in the initial settings ?

do you fly in cold i.e. icy weather? anti ice might help then

Is this with all prop aircraft?  All airports?  I wonder if you have a control conflict between your elevator controls and your mixture controls?

Need more details!

I haven't tried all the prop aircraft yet but specifically I cannot get the Daher TBM 930 to fly out of New York JFK airport.  I am using the Saitek pro Throttle Quadrant (the old version) -the throttle control is behaving very erratically and I cannot obtain full power to take off.   It is possible a new Saitek might cure the problem but they seem to be unavailable anywhere at the moment.  I don't think icing is the problem as I have manually set the outside air temperature to 20 degrees C.   

If you pull back on the stick while stationary on the ground does the throttle level move? 

When you say the throttle lever is behaving erratically is it jumping around on it’s own?

When I move the Saitek throttle forwards to apply power and then leave it around  half way, the aircraft throttle lever moves forward too, but then jumps back of its own accord without any further adjustment of the Saitek from me.

Try it while parked with the engine off and touching nothing else not even the joystick.  Does the throttle still jump back after half throttle ?  

If it DOES the issue is with the throttle mapping and you may have mapped it twice, once to the throttle axis and a second time to some throttle off option.

If it DOES NOT then something else is interfering with the throttle/

I've had the throttle cut out for no apparent reason a few times.  The only suspicion I have is that it often seems to happen over Mark Taylors Brislol scenery created from Google data.  I just can't see how a piece of scenery could affect the throttle.  I don't recall it happening anywhere else though.

Reset all your controls and try this with only a keyboard & mouse and see if it still happens.

What is probably happening is that you go full throttle and now another control is overriding it back to 0%.

Most likely more than one control mapped to the throttle and they're conflicting, or you have a noisy axis

I think it must be something to do with the throttle mapping.  I have managed to delete the throttle inputs for the keyboard and no keys are assigned in the throttle settings for the mouse input.  Yet the throttle in the aircraft seems to be stuck at 42% and after physically moving the Saitek throttle the aircraft throttle moves but keeps jumping back to 42%    I have had a look at Saitek's guide on mapping their hardware but find it difficult to follow.  Is there a beginner's guide available anywhere  ? 

I have now solved this mystery- one of the joystick buttons was controlling the throttle and holding it at mid thrust. Having deleted that assignment, the Saitek throttle now works correctly. 

Glad to hear it!

In some aircraft like the TBM which doesn't have a mixture control.  If the axis on your quadrant is in the lean position, if you press ESC then back into the sim it will kill the engines because you have mixture fully lean, even though the TBM doesn't have mixture.  I ALWAYS keep mixture axis in the fully rich position because of this.  Is this your issue?