Same, would never use one with a blade attachment and no clutch.
I like using the ones without a clutch as it is good for finicky bits where you can come in a basically idle and still cut.
The main thing with those model homelites is the carby paired with the clutchless design - along with my insistence not to rev a cold engine.
Me starting one goes like this:
Prime, choke, pull 10 times.
Fires and revs flat out (throttle kicker built into choke), blip throttle straight away, choke springs comes off, throttle goes back to idle.
Promptly stalls as its so lean. Put choke back on, pull nothing. Then make the mistake of trying full throttle no choke. Kick back, kick back. Try no throttle no choke - kick, kick.
Leave it 5 minutes and put choke on fire it up and rev the living hell out of it for 2 minutes until it will idle.
With my carby mod:
Prime, pull 3 times
Fires and runs at a slow idle
Manually push choke up slightly and maintain a fast idle for 30 seconds
Blip throttle and let it idle another minute before running.
They run that lean when cold anyway they still don't smoke with the choke nearly full on. This is with full carby check, clean and kit on pretty much mint condition machines
I run full ester synthetic at a 'rich' 50:1 (about 45:1) so I don't worry about idling 2 strokes as much as I would with a higher ash mineral oil clogging things up
