d&tm wrote:

Steve, thanks for that. I have made up similar spreadsheets for the Warrior
and C172 , but perhaps a little fancier in that they are set up to select
different reg numbers from a drop down menu, with the specific aircraft
data ( useful for paupers like me who dont own their own plane), a clear
button to clear all the input data and a message box to warn if any of the
fuel, baggage or total wt restrictions are exceeded. But I like your idea
of showing the low fuel point ( rather than just deleting the fuel as I do)
I think I will steal this idea :)
As I said in my previous post, it would be very unusual for me to have more
wt in the back than the front, ( which is likely to test the aft cg ) but
I could understand with club seating, the pax might be more inclined to want
to ride in style, instead of up the front.with the driver.

I'll have to dust off an Excel manual and polish up my spreadsheets with
some of your cool features! :-)

I notice even your 6 seater would struggle to take 4 adults with full fuel.
( the adutls would have to weigh on average less than 180 lbs - counts out
a lot of my friends!
Terry
ppl downunder


True, though full tanks would far exceed the typical passenger's bladder
range. Half tanks would still yield over 2 hours of flying time with
reserves (close enough to the upper end of the random passenger's
comfort limit per my experience) and let you carry a 5th person plus a
bit of baggage some 300+nm.

The Lance is by far the most practical aircraft I've ever had the
pleasure to fly. As a coincidental but random trip example, we're
heading off tomorrow to Santa Barbara with a full load of 6 people to
make good on a trip we donated for an event at a local community
college. This will be my wife and I plus 4 people who won the drawing.
Fortunately, the passenger weights are a bit on the low side, so with
partial fuel we can fly the ~300 mile round trip with fuel to spare. It
always seems like our passenger load works out pretty well.

One of the advantages of being a sole owner/operator is that you don't
have to worry about the prior pilot/partner/club member topping off the
tanks when you need to fly with partial fuel. I'd sure hate to drain 40
or 50 gallons before a flight because someone forgot _not_ to top off,
or perhaps the prior scheduled flight didn't occur so the tanks are
still full from the flight before that one.

Steve