On Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:56:30 -0700, Ron Garret
wrote:

It occurred to me today that in fifteen years of flying I have never
once found water in my fuel when I've drained my tanks. Not a drop.
Ever. Am I just lucky, or is this really as rare an occurrence as it
seems to be? (I fly in SoCal. Maybe that has something to do with it.)

Wellll... From good old Michigan where we can easily see 30 degrees
change between night and day, day after day that can amount to a lot
of condensation. Keeping tanks full or nearly so seems to take care
of the problem but half full with the plane in a steel hangar with a
concrete floor usually means water in the thanks.

Stored indoors, if you can call an unheated steel hangar indoors (at
least it's out of the rain) particularly in the spring where the
humidity is usually very high and temperature swings can be 50 or more
degrees between day and night although 30 is typical (50 day, 30
night The next 10 days are showing mostly 40's in the day and teens
to 20s at night) I have taken over a pint out of 25 gallon tanks that
were about 1/4 full.

Outdoors is little different unless the cap seals are leaking which
does happen on Bonanza/Debonair caps. In that case they serve as great
substitutes for funnels and even full tanks get ...fuller:-)) The
gas gets displaced and the water collects.

I had to store the Deb outside while they were redoing the taxiways a
few years back. We had quite a bit of rain during that period and I
was getting one to two pints a day with full tanks. A quick trip to
the FBO took care of that. At least I know from that and flying in
torrential rain the window and door seals work well. :-))



rg
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com