On Nov 30, 1:53*pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:
Meticulous pilot runs out of gas and can't land in a corn field!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20...travel_brief_f...

Must have got his license from Canadian Tire.
Ken

I wonder how often these fuel exhaustions happen because the pilot
might have forgotten to lean his mixture or had a petcock leak and
drain away fuel, as opposed to planning a 4 hour XC with 3 + 50 of
fuel aboard?

My fuel management plan is simple, but has worked so far. I taxi out
on the least full tank (so I know it's working), do run up and so
forth on the tank I intend to use for take off (some check lists have
the PIC switch to the most full tank after run up -- I would not
switch tanks and then take off!). I burn away half the fuel in the the
take off tank, switch to the other, and it doesn't matter if my
ultimate destination is just 50 miles ahead, when I switch back to the
initial tank, thought to be half full, I will land for fuel. I don't
ever remember needing more than 45 gallons to fill both tanks in the
Mooney. and those flights include some quite long VMC cross country
flights (Long Beach CA to the east coast comes to mind),