I burn fuel from the tank that the minute hand on my clock is pointing to.
That way I can always tell by looking if I remembered to switch tanks last
1/2 hour.

My tie-down is fifty feet from the runway. I don't switch tanks on the
ground for this reason. I'd hate to switch to a bad one only to find out at
100' that it's bad. I'd rather find out 1/2 hour later, at several thousand
feet. My opinion will probably change the first time I find bad gas in one
of my tanks.




"Tony" wrote in message
oups.com...
No more wondering what jerk last flew the airplane, huh? Even better,
since you'll be in the same airplane all of the time you'll pretty soon
figure it it knows how to read your mind. Think it, it does it. Took
mine (an M20J) about 20 hours to figure out what I was trying to do.
Then it began to really be fun -- you'd know exactly where it would
touch down, if you were a couple of knots fast on final it felt awful!
I think you'll find hand flying the thing IFR great fun, too, holding
altitude within a needle width gets easy (but in my case having glide
slope and localizer centered near the ground still takes lots of
attention).

You'll also figure out how to make it sip gas: low rpms, careful
leaning, and the like. The IO360 that pulled the Mooney around on long
trips eastbound (10 or 12 thousand feet) would be very happy drinking
about 8 GPH. That provides all kinds of endurance (we carried about 60
gallons useable).

About fuel management --for what it's worth I liked to taxi out on one
tank, switch over to the take-off tank for run-up -- I'd break the hand
of anyone who tried to switch tanks afterrunup and before takeoff!--. I
figured at that point I proved both tanks would run the engine. I'd fly
away half the tank I took off on, switch over, and take most of the
fuel off the other tank. One of the thought processes was that the
first tank still had enough in it to get me back to where I started
from when I switched. (East coast based, nearly all first legs were
into a headwind). No matter what my flight plan said, when I switched
back to the takeoff tank (now I had somewhat more than 25% of the fuel
left) I was going to land for gas.

That fuel management scheme was part of our own checklist that was a
bunch more thought out than the one the airplane came with. (Are your
navs and coms set up for the miss inbound of the marker? Ours were. ADF
was almost always tuned to a strong station near our destination, it
turns out the adf needle makes a good replacement for the DG should it
fail. That was part of our en route checklist.)

There's a thought. Other pilots, chip in here. What things do you do to
keep yourself safe that are not usually taught? I've offered a couple
of obvious ones, you've got to have better ones.