Fun weekend buying an Arrow (long)

Mike Spera wrote in message ...
One well known aviation university teaches you to "fly out on the tank
you flew in on". The theory being that takeoff is not the time to "test"
whether a tank you just switched to is blocked, the fuel valve
malfunctioned, a tank is empty (cuz you forgot to check it), a tank you
just switched to is full of water, etc.

Pretty poor theory. It's a haphazardway of avoiding actually managing
your fuel. I'm more of a measure, calculate type of guy myself. I keep
a log of the tanks in flight in my Mooney (I don't have a "both"
selector).
I also don't buy into the "fill the tanks before take off" B.S. You
should know how much fuel you need and how much extra you'll need. I
just don't see putting 8 hours of fuel in my Mooney and pushing around
like an over stuffed whale.
All this reminds me of the Bonanza pilot who declared a fuel emergency
only to discover he had another 3 hours of fuel. He always put 5 hours
in it, but never let it go below 2 hours, he burned 12gal/hr but
caluclated it as 15 gal/hr, etc, etc. All this "extra safety buffer"
just meant he had NO idea how much fuel he had.


-Robert, CFI

"Steve Foley" wrote in message
news:JuS4e.23$Xm3.18@trndny01...
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.


One little trick I learned after picking an airplane up from a hayfield
because the fuel selector shaft broke. Never switch fuel tanks unless you
can see a place to land about one minute ahead! :-) Airports are best, but
any good field will do.

Highflyer
Highflight Aviation Services
Pinckneyville Airport ( PJY )

Fuel tanks are switched approximately each hour. Fuel tanks are ALWAYS
switched overhead or in close proximity to an enroute airport.

Tony wrote:
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.

On 6-Apr-2005, "Tony" wrote:

I'd fly away half the tank I took off on, switch over, and take most of
the
fuel off the other tank.


An Arrow will get pretty wing-heavy with one tank full and the other at
half. This is particularly true on newer Arrows with 72 gallons usable
fuel. What I do is fly for 45 min on the "takeoff" tank and then switch
every hour. Keeps the fuel load balanced within a few gallons.
--
-Elliott Drucker

On 6-Apr-2005, "Paul kgyy" wrote:

Enjoy the Arrow - it's one of the great airplanes. Be thankful for
that free-fall landing gear. I landed with 2 green last year when one
of the squat switch wires broke from old age - strong pucker factor.


Exactly the same thing happened to me in our Arrow IV. What made it
interesting is that it happened when I lowered the gear to slow down in the
looooong line of airplanes headed in to land at OSH.

--
-Elliott Drucker