Running dry?

Recently, Greg Copeland posted:

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:21:16 +0000, Neil Gould wrote:
Besides being pointless? How about being uneccesarily risky?


[...]
So what risk factor can you assign to what is more or less, a
non-event?

It's a non-event *if* the tank runs dry at a convenient time and place,
*if* the engine restarts (I've had one heck of a time restarting a warm
fuel-injected engine at times), etc. Even if these risks are low, they're
still uneccesary, so I'll stand by my opinion. ;-)

As for the "why", John Says, "I'd like to take a look at fuel
management, and since my method sometimes calls for running a tank
dry, let's get that out of the way first." In other words, its his
strategy for fuel management which lets him known and understand how
much he really has in reserve and how much can he get out of the
"unuseable". Should he have an event where he has to bite into his
reserves, he never has to say, "I sure hope I have enough. I wonder
how much is there".

What's the point in all of this? If he can't figure out fuel consumption
rates from the amount of fuel that he replaces after the flight, what good
is running the tanks dry? One is supposed to have a 45-minute reserve VFR;
that's quite a bit more fuel than running dry. The whole idea is *not* to
run dry. To me, it sounds like a fools game to do otherwise.

Neil