Running dry?

I trust my fuel gauges like I trust the IRS to help me with my taxes.
They'll tell me when I'm in deep doo-doo, but they won't keep me from
getting there.


Luv it! Can I quote you on that?

Most excellent. Me, too?

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Well, after reading probably 100 posts in this thread over the past couple
of days, I've got a question to put to you all. What is the chance that
you run a tank dry and the switch to the other tank, only to discover that
you had a collision with a tree on takeoff and the other tank (along with
half the wing which contained it) was torn right off the airplane, and you
never noticed. Then you'd be in deep doo-doo, right?

What is this lunatic talking about, you ask? I'm talking about...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005380500,00.html

Yep. Just when you think you've seen EVERYTHING possible, a guy like this
takes to the air in a seemingly non-airworthy plane, and flies innocently
into infamy.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Holy cow. What GA plane has that kind of a useful load?

A plane that has the GPS ripped out of it, along with the fuel
totalizer, the autopilot, the dual vacuum pumps, the auxilliary
electrical system, the third nav/com, the second nav/com, the DME, the
radar pod, and the sferics unit. Once you pull that stuff out of the
panel, you can carry some payload.

As a matter of routine, though,
our average flight is into a...

Well, not everyone flies your average flight, so not everyone will use
(or require) the same flying technique. This includes fuel management.
I can certainly understand the benefit of, indeed the -need- of,
deliberately running a tank dry under known and ontrolled conditions
during a flight - a four or six tank airplane which is flown to leave
half an hour in each tank isn't going to fly very far. OTOH, I fly a
two tank airplane near sea level, and I prefer to have some fuel in the
other tank at all times.

Neither method is a priori "dumb". It may well be dumb for =you=, with
the kind of flying =you= do, and the kind of plane =you= own, and the
kind of experience =you= have. But not everyone is Jay. Not everyone
=should= be Jay. Not everyone should =fly= like Jay.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Newps" wrote in message
...


Matt Barrow wrote:



Starting out with partial fuel means you are starting with the C/G
already partially aft.
I always calculated both the takeoff and landing C/G when I flew the Bo
I had access to.


All you need do is NOT overload the rear seats/baggage area.

On a 1300 foot strip I will be all alone and will have removed the rear
seats.



I assume he's getting a V-tail; CG is much better with a straight tail
(yet
still a bit narrow).

It is better with the A36, not with the 33's.

It is, but the 33 is still 2 1/2" wider than the 35, yet still more
sensitive than other four place jobbies. Still, I got a B36 so I could
easily handle four people total.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:yWwOe.299648$xm3.128272@attbi_s21...
I don't know if there's a way to adequately answer your question, as no
records (to my knowledge) are kept of this kind of thing.

The one record we all know, however, is the appallingly high number of
"accidents" that happen each year because of planes running out of gas.
This is a statistic that should be easily improved, yet, year after year,
the numbers stay stubbornly high.

Are the large numbers due to fuel exhaustion or fuel mismanagement. Seems I
remember a lot of engine out accidents are fuel mismanagement and not
exhaustion.

Many of you, it seems never read Deakin's article, or have given much
thought to the procedure. My normal fuel management, when we'd tow
banners, was takeoff on the left tank (the "main" because it has
pickups in the front and back of the tank) and fly for 30 minutes.
Depending on the day and the size of the banner, that would leave :45
to 2:30 hours remaining (fuel burn ranged from 5.2 gph to 9.5 gph.
Switch then to the right tank, and run dry.

Worst case scenario, and I have contaminated fuel in the right tank, I
still have enough in the main to get home on. After running the right
tank dry, I'd know EXACTLY how much longer I could stay on station, and
still land with my required reserve. Normally, I could predict within
5 minutes when the tank would run out, and I'd climb to a safe altitude
in preparation (usually 600' AGL) the most altitude I ever lost while
the engine restarted was 100' on a silky smooth day when that tank ran
TOTALY dry at once, normally it would sputter and cough a few times
first.

In addition to now knowing how much endurence I had, this also meant
that all my fuel was in one tank, and as others have said, if I was to
land with :30 minutes of fuel at 5.5/hr, I'd much rather have all 2.8
gallons in one tank, rather than 1.4 in each! In practice, we never
landed with less than 45 minutes though; we'd want to have enough to
get to our field, attempt a drop, go around with a fouled banner, and
then proceed to the nearest paved runway, land, and fly back to base.

A friend of mine very nearly put one in short of the runway once
because someone else wasn't familiar with the fuel burn, and fuel
capacity. He routinely would get a safe 5 hour endurance out of his
plane, with reserve. Someone else flew it on his day off, and landed
with both tanks on "E" This means very little in a Super Cub, as the
last mark on the gauge reads "3pt attitude- 1/4 to E".

The next day, we didn't have fuel at our strip, and had to refuel at a
nearby airport (4 miles distant). He took off on the last selected
tank (figuring that it was the one landed on, it would be the fullest)
it ran dry on him 1 mile from the airport. Swiching tanks, he was able
to get a restart, and taxi in to refuel. 17.4 gallons was pumped into
the dry tank, and 17.2 into the other. The other pilot later claimed
he "knew you flew it for 5 hours, so I landed after 4" He thought he
had at LEAST a 1:30 hour reserve when he landed, in reality, it was
about 4 minutes.

They were both very lucky; had the other pilot run a tank dry (damn
near did anyway) he would have known his endurance estimate was way
off, and he'd have to land sooner than anticipated. Of course, the
prudent thing to do would have been to drain 5 gallons from another
airplane and pour it into my friend's plane, to be sure he could make
it, but we both assumed that our coworker wouldn't land with less than
5 minutes of fuel in the tanks.

Food for thought,
Mike

Jay,

Ok, then give us just one example to back up your belief. Just one. And
next
...

I always start off any thread as nice as pie. However, when posters
continuously (and, of course, purposefully) misconstrue what I'm saying (as
you are doing now), it gets aggravating.

So where do I misconstrue? And what was your example supporting your belief
again?


--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

John,

Fuel tanks are of various shapes and sizes.


which may even change, e.g. when a fuel bladder collapses partially.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Mark,

refueling adds an hour
to your trip and the break to stretch your legs helps prevent fatigue on
really long trips.


IF there is an airfield with fuel along the route. Which often isn't the
case.

Also, consider an airplane with 4 or even 6 fuel tanks, not at all
uncommon. Leaving, say, 5 gallons sloshing around in each robs you of 25
gallons of fuel - which is at least 1.5 hours flying time. That is quite a
lot. In fact, it could be considered a really good reserve. Except for
that, you'd want it all in one tank.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Recently, Jay Honeck posted:

Who the heck flies a plane without visually examining their fuel
supply before each flight?

Oh, wait -- I forgot about those silly *high wings* and that whole
"find a ladder" thing.

What is this "find a ladder" bit? Every Cessna I've flown has a built-in
step to allow visual inspection of the fuel level. It's part of the
pre-flight regimen. Along with the 13 drain points in newer models... I
just want to know how they managed to get so many low points in their
tanks, and who thought that was a Good Thing? ;-)

Neil