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Check your gas.



 
 
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  #21  
Old December 1st 09, 06:16 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Mike Ash
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Posts: 299
Default Check your gas.

In article ,
Mike Ash wrote:

In article
,
a wrote:

Thanks for the discussion and all the info. While I don't know if it'll
ever be directly useful to me, it doesn't hurt to know, and it's all
very interesting.


Uh, Mike, that thing you're pushing on the other end of the tow rope
-- in spite of the push it does burn that gas stuff.


Oh yes! I didn't mean to imply that gas-burners weren't useful to me!
Rather, I simply meant that the tow pilots know way more about this sort
of thing than I do, and so I pretty much just have to trust them to get
things right. (The mutual trust goes both ways, as I could just as
easily get him killed as he could get me killed.)

Is there ever a time during a tow that you don't have enough energy to
get back to the field?


Yes there is, for a short period of time.

On a normal tow out of my field, there's a tense zone between about 50ft
and 150ft where I'm too high to land on the remaining runway and too low
to do a 180 back to the runway. If we're operating off runway 27,
there's a decent-looking field off the end that I could use in the event
of an emergency in that region, and it's *likely* that it would just be
a big inconvenience. Off runway 9, there are fields but nothing very
friendly, and it would probably ruin my day to have to go into one.

Aside from this short window, I'm fine. I still don't want to ha


So, I just discovered that my newsreader has a keyboard shortcut for
sending a message. I did not know this before!

Anyway, to continue....

I still don't want to have anything happen, because the tow plane's
ability to make it back to the airport is far less than my own, and the
guy flying it is probably a friend. And of course, I'd rather not have
to spontaneously test my emergency responses if I can help it (although
once I'm past 1,000ft or so, a premature termination of the tow isn't
really an emergency anymore). But for the bulk of the tow, it's more of
an indirect worry.

I've long ago lost the notion of flying around for 'fun', the airplane
has been a point to point tool, pretty much like a car is (that I
smile a lot when flying does NOT make it non-business). Now you have
me thinking all flying need not be expense account stuff. Should you
be thanked, or cursed?


That's a great question. Maybe you should go try some fun flying and
see.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
  #22  
Old December 1st 09, 06:45 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Mxsmanic
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Posts: 9,169
Default Check your gas.

Mike Ash writes:

The difference is that a glider's energy source is so UNreliable that no
sane pilot would ever count on it being there, and the glide performance
is necessarily so large, thus a safe landing spot is always kept within
range.


Is it reasonable to think of altitude as the glider equivalent of fuel, or is
that too much of a simplification to be useful? In the sense of a resource
that must be carefully managed, I mean. In a powered aircraft, you can "buy"
more altitude in exchange for fuel, if you run low, but in a glider, you have
only what nature has chosen to provide, although I suppose you can search for
naturally occurring "wellsprings" of altitude from which you can draw to
extend your flight.
  #23  
Old December 1st 09, 07:13 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Jeffrey Bloss
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Posts: 112
Default Check your gas.

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:21:46 -0800 (PST), Flaps_50! wrote:

I agree that removing the engine might reduce the probability of a
mechanical failure,


LOL

What does a mechanical failure on a sim have to do with this thread?
--
_?_ Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
(@ @) Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-oOO-(_)--OOo-------------------------------[ Groucho Marx ]--
grok! Devoted Microsoft User
  #24  
Old December 1st 09, 07:16 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Jeffrey Bloss
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Posts: 112
Default Check your gas.

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:00:51 -0800 (PST), Mark wrote:

That's what happened to a Beech King Air turbo a
couple of weeks ago near me. Ran out of gas, for
as yet undetermined reasons.


Uh, lessee, engine burn?
--
_?_ Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
(@ @) Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
-oOO-(_)--OOo-------------------------------[ Groucho Marx ]--
grok! Devoted Microsoft User
  #26  
Old December 1st 09, 07:32 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Mike Ash
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Posts: 299
Default Check your gas.

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

Mike Ash writes:

The difference is that a glider's energy source is so UNreliable that no
sane pilot would ever count on it being there, and the glide performance
is necessarily so large, thus a safe landing spot is always kept within
range.


Is it reasonable to think of altitude as the glider equivalent of fuel, or is
that too much of a simplification to be useful? In the sense of a resource
that must be carefully managed, I mean. In a powered aircraft, you can "buy"
more altitude in exchange for fuel, if you run low, but in a glider, you have
only what nature has chosen to provide, although I suppose you can search for
naturally occurring "wellsprings" of altitude from which you can draw to
extend your flight.


It's somewhat oversimplified, but yes, altitude is essentially fuel for
a glider.

During my wave flight this past weekend, I gave my brother a quiz,
partially to educate him and partially to check us both for signs of
hypoxia. We were somewhere around 10,000ft at the time. The quiz was
this: if we simply turned downwind and went as far as we could, how far
would we get? The answer was amazingly large, something like 80 miles.
We got up to 25 miles away from the home field on that flight, but I
always knew I had enough "fuel" to get us home.

In contrast, if you're down at 1,000ft above the ground, you had better
have a landing spot right there.

I call it "oversimplified" because altitude is fuel for powered aircraft
too, it's just a small proportion of what they usually have on board.
And both also have energy of speed. (A zoom climb from Vne can net me
several hundred feet.) Really, the proper term is energy. Powered
aircraft have three types: fuel on board, altitude, and speed. A glider
still has two of the three.

Searching for those "naturally occurring 'wellsprings'", which we call
"lift" (because it's always a great idea to use the same word for two
completely different things) is the whole point of soaring flight.
Towing up and gliding down gets boring after a while, and isn't really
all that hard, either. I was reasonably good at that only two months
into my training. Three years later, I still feel only semi-decent at
finding and using lift, and fully expect to spend the rest of my life
working at it.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
  #27  
Old December 1st 09, 07:46 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
[email protected]
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Posts: 838
Default Check your gas.

On Dec 1, 12:17*pm, Jeffrey Bloss wrote:

As often as Mxsmanic?


That would be my guess LOL
  #28  
Old December 1st 09, 09:15 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
vaughn[_2_]
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Posts: 92
Default Check your gas.


"Mike Ash" wrote in message
...
In contrast, if you're down at 1,000ft above the ground, you had better
have a landing spot right there.


At that point (depending on your glider and conditions) you have perhaps 3
minutes of fuel in your "tank".

Vaughn


  #29  
Old December 1st 09, 09:32 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
vaughn[_2_]
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Posts: 92
Default Check your gas.


"Flaps_50!" wrote in message
...

Seems like glider piloting is a problem (it can't be the iron fairy)
or is there another cause?


Measuring accidents on the basis of flight hours does not necessarily give you
the whole picture. If you had ever spent much time at a glider training
operation, you would quickly see part of the difference between power training
and glider training, and how the statistics can get skewed when you only look at
flight hours. Glider primary training flights tend to be so short that students
traditionally count "flights" rather than "hours". With gliders or airplanes,
accidents happen overwhelmingly on takeoff or landing. As it turns out, glider
students spend a greater percentage of their flight time in those two
(statistically more dangerous) phases of flight.

Vaughn






  #30  
Old December 1st 09, 10:09 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
vaughn[_2_]
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Posts: 92
Default Check your gas.


"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message
...
Well for small a/c (I'm Cessna 152), I fill my own and
check for water and of course color.
Otherwise, read the meter of the gas input or trust the
fella loading you.


No way! (I suspect Ken is another who flies about as much as Mx) I don't care
if you watched the guy top off your tank and now both guages read full. The
wise pilot still visually checks the fuel level before flight (eyeball, finger,
or dip stick). While you are at it, make sure that both filler caps are on
tight.

Every Flight Manual has a fuel consumption rate graph
as a function of power/rpm/cruising speed, so at flight
planning, a time and range can be estimated that does
not rely on the fuel gauge, which is accurate to +/- 10%.


I would LOVE to have a Cessna with a fuel guage that was accurate to +/- 10%.
On every Cessna I have ever flown, the fuel guages were best described as
semi-usless crap. Do I look at them? Yes; because in-flight they are your only
direct evidence of remaining fuel. Do I trust them? No!

So a cross check of a wrist watch with the fuel gauge
is a no-brainer.
Ken


Vaughn


 




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