"Roger Long" om wrote in message ...
I was looking over the web site of a flying club that posts the minutes of
their meetings. One item said that fuel was running out of the wing of
their 172 when the flaps were fully extended because the overflow drain was
broken. They asked that the tanks not be completely filled until this could
be fixed.

Am I just overly compulsive about maintenance or are these people nuts?

I'm not going to say I've never flown an airplane with a fuel leak,
but it all depends on the situation. Without knowing the situation,
it's hard to judge.

Example, when I was towing banners. The company had 8 airplanes, and
all of 'em were 40-60 years old. Things break, and when you're using
planes to make money, sometimes you have to prioritize things.

On the first flight of a freshly restored plane (tow plane mind you,
so any luxury item has been removed, things like radios, windows,
doors, interior, ect.) everything was going well. Plane flew well,
engine was running ok, and everything seemed to work. Of course, we
only put 15 gallons in her for the one hour flight, so the tanks were
nowhere near full. The next day, when I showed up for work, I filled
the tanks and got ready to work.

Problem- fuel leak. The PA-12 has a fuel system simlar to a Cessna,
the left tank has a vented cap, and the right tank is vented to the
left, and there is a seperate shutoff valve for each tank. The cross
vent had fuel dripping right onto my shoulder. Heck with it, it'll
stop once I burn off a few gallons, and it's evaporating anyway and
without doors and windows, it's not like I'll have a problem with
fumes.

After 5 minutes it stopped and I was able to replace the fuel line at
the end of the day. It ammounted to MAYBE 4 or 5 oz. of gas lost, and
I was able to get the work done.

When it's your airplane that you're using for pleasure you can have
the luxury of downing the plane for a week to fix something as soon as
it breaks. But if there's no room in the shop until Thursday, well,
maybe you can fly it until then.

I'm not defending places that let the maintinace go, I've worked for
them before, but not for long. They don't do "maintinace," that's
what you do to keep something from breaking. They did damage control;
run it until it won't run no more then clean up the mess and fix it.
Is that what this club is doing?

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like they want to fix it, but
don't want to inconvenience it's members for a minor squak while the
plane waits in the shop. I've flown out of places like that, you show
up to fly, but there's no airplanes available. The only one left is
grounded because of a bad attitude gyro. On a clear VFR day. But
it's not getting worked on, it's waiting in the shop because there's a
2 day backlog.

But not everyone has the luxury of flying something that looks like it
just came off the showromm floor. Now, if you're paying for a rental,
that's another story. If I were paying top dollar for something like
that, I'd want it to work properly too. But there are always two
sides to every story. Alot of times what's recorded in a club's
minutes is the distillation of a 30 or 40 minute debate into 3
sentence.


--
Mike O'Malley