Near miss from space junk.

DR wrote in :

chris wrote:
On Mar 30, 5:19 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
chris writes:
None of the small aircraft I have ever flown has had TCAS.. Are
you sure you got that right ???
By "often used," I meant "when present on small aircraft, this is
the type usually used," because it's cheaper. I don't think TCAS is
really present very much on small GA aircraft, but I don't have
actual figures. Since good avionics represent a substantial portion
of the total cost of an aircraft, it follows that one wouldn't see
advanced avionics that often on aircraft that are not otherwise very
expensive. Who would install $2 million of avionics on a $90,000
aircraft?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

I fear it's even worse than you think, at least in this country,
where private aircraft ownership is quite rare. Most light a/c are
either aero club owned, i.e. 172 / Cherokee, or commercial, like
Senecas and the like.. And on the whole, avionics tends to get
neglected. The vast majority of club a/c wouldn't have GPS, let
alone glass cockpits or TCAS. I have seen inside some commercial
operated light a/c like Senecas and Aztecs and you'd probably be
horrified at how basic they are. Just a couple of ADFs and VORs and
that's all they get. Maybe a DME thrown in for good measure...

And don't think they get maintained either. If the a/c came with IFR
gear and isn't being used for IFR, like at an aero club, when things
like DME and VOR break down they don't get fixed, they just get
placarded as inop. Same as fuel gauges. Of 9 planes at our club,
only 4 have working fuel gauges!! The rest are just placarded u/s.
And the only reason there are 4 planes that have gauges that work is
3 of them are brand new a/craft. The deal with fuel gauges is, we
know the fuel burn and we have a stick to dip the tank on preflight,
what do we need gauges for ???


Hi Chris,

Doesn't the MEL in part 91.509 say that fuel gauges are required...
Are you saying that the director CAA has deemed that working (not
necessarily accurate) fuel gauges are not required in your club -what
gives?

Flown lots of airliners where gauges may be U/S provided that the tanks
are dripped. This is not true of the current crop of airliners but you
coudl do it on older 73's for instance.

Bertie

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
On 2007-04-02, chris wrote:
As I tried to point out, the stuff that is placarded is the stuff
that's optional. I am not trained to use a VOR, for instance, so
having it placarded inop doesn't make any difference to me. All the
things I actually need definitely work.

You can train yourself to use the VOR quite easily, it's very simple to
use, and is a useful navigational cross check even if you're strictly
VFR (or flying VFR direct, you can use cross radials as navigational
cross checks).

The pilot's license is after all a license to learn, and avionics should
not be left out of that learning!


You are right of coarse, but I don't think that was really his point.
Depending on the weather and your flight plan, a VOR is quite often totally
useless.

"chris" wrote in message
oups.com...

As I tried to point out, the stuff that is placarded is the stuff
that's optional. I am not trained to use a VOR, for instance, so
having it placarded inop doesn't make any difference to me. All the
things I actually need definitely work.


I haven't seen this link post in a thought you might enjoy it. It's VOR
simulator.

http://www.visi.com/~mim/nav/

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
On 2007-04-01, chris wrote:
only 4 have working fuel gauges!! The rest are just placarded u/s.
And the only reason there are 4 planes that have gauges that work is 3
of them are brand new a/craft. The deal with fuel gauges is, we know
the fuel burn and we have a stick to dip the tank on preflight, what
do we need gauges for ???

That's a hazardous attitude, and a fuel exhaustion accident waiting to
happen. The fuel gauges should not be relied on - this is true - but
they should work as they provide a useful cross check.

I was new to the 1960 Cessna 182 which I was taking on a long cross
country trip. The night before, I checked the fuel to make sure I didn't
need to have it topped off, since I was leaving before the FBO would be
open. Looking into the tank, the fuel was at the top. I checked it again
the next morning as part of my preflight. The fuel level was the same.

I had calculated my fuel burn for the trip, which gave me an hour's
reserve on landing.

Halfway through the trip, the fuel gauges showed less fuel than my
calculations said the tanks should have, so I told ATC that I was going
to land short of my destination.

I then discovered that what looked like full wasn't really - probably
about 45 minutes off full. I could have ended up at my destination with
only 15 minutes of fuel. A go around, or a vexatious routing from ATC
could quite easily have exhausted that.

The important lesson is to be conservative with long flights in an
unfamiliar aircraft, and that fuel gauges are a very useful cross check.
How many fuel exhaustions have happened because fuel gauges have been
improperly maintained, could not provide a cross check, and the pilot's
calculation was wrong? Or the pilot had less fuel than he thought? Or
there was a leak?


If you are planing a flight with so little reserve, which is obviously
considered both legal and acceptable - I highly recommend you carry your own
gage, and physically _stick_ the tanks on preflight. My personal experience
with fuel gages has been that they can cause more problems than they solve,
if you try to rely heavily on them.

On 2007-04-02, Maxwell wrote:
If you are planing a flight with so little reserve, which is obviously
considered both legal and acceptable

A one hour reserve is hardly "little reserve". It's quarter of the
duration of a 1960 Cessna 182 (which has relatively small tanks,
especially compared to later models of Cessna 182). A one hour reserve
is double the day VFR minimum requirement.

(My current aircraft carries only 2.5 hours of fuel! Although its fuel
gauge is a much simpler purely mechanical indicator which does work
properly and gives a reasonable indication of fuel remaining.)

gage, and physically _stick_ the tanks on preflight. My personal experience
with fuel gages has been that they can cause more problems than they solve,
if you try to rely heavily on them.

So does any instrument if you don't have a cross check. Fuel gauges in
particular ARE the cross check to your preflight visual check, and fuel
burn calculations. If you re-read my message, you'll see in the
particular example I gave that the fuel was visually inspected twice,
and calculations had been performed, and a landing short of the
destination was chosen because the fuel gauge showed less fuel than the
fuel calculations predicted. The error turned out to be in the fuel
level inspection, an easy mistake to make in an unfamiliar aircraft.

The only means of fuel cross check once in flight are the fuel gauges -
you can hardly stick the tanks in flight. Gauges that actually work and
reasonably indicate the fuel level remaining can provide a cross check
which can prevent the following situations:

- lack of experience with a particular aircraft type
- error in fuel burn calculations
- error in engine management (mixture too rich)
- mechanical failure (fuel leak)
- error in preflight (forgetting to do a visual check, or being fooled
because the aircraft was parked on a slope)

....from a normal landing at an airport short of your destination, into a
fuel exhaustion accident. Indeed, some years ago, a poster to this
newsgroup ran out of fuel due to a fuel leak. Perhaps the pilot had been
conditioned to believe that fuel gauges were utterly useless and did not
include them in a cross check, instead relying on a single source of
data (fuel calculations and time in flight).

Cross checks in aviation are a _good thing_. Failing to maintain a
basic instrument that can provide a useful cross check means there's one
less tool at your disposal to prevent an accident.

(In particular, never trust a fuel gauge if it says you have more fuel
than you think you have. However, ALWAYS trust a fuel gauge if it says
you have less fuel than you think you have! Landing to find out why is a
lot cheaper than pressing on, believing your fuel inspection and fuel
burn calculations - only to end up upside down in a field half an hour
later because your fuel was being pumped overboard. How are you going to
detect mechanical problems with the fuel system if the gauge isn't
working? This is why broken fuel gauges should be fixed).

We expect to have to do cross checks for everything else - navigational
cross checks (we never rely on a single source for navigation, whether
this be only using a single road to positively identify a ground feature
instead of the road and two other features), or for our instruments (we
don't just bore holes IFR looking only at the attitude indicator for
attitude information - we scan the other instruments to make sure that
the AI is telling the truth), and we fly approaches not only with the
ILS tuned in, but a timer running, or some other kind of cross check
like a crossing radial.

Why is it therefore deemed not only acceptable but entirely normal
that there is no in-flight fuel cross check in the form of a gauge that
at least gives a reasonable indication of how much fuel you have left?

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Maxwell writes:

You are right of coarse, but I don't think that was really his point.
Depending on the weather and your flight plan, a VOR is quite often totally
useless.

If the weather suddenly turns bad, you may sorely regret not having a VOR that
works.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

RST Engineering wrote:
Bertie ...

You were absent from the group when we made a rather collective decision to
disregard maniac's postings. I'd appreciate it if you would join us.

Jim

Boy, that collective decision seems to be working out real well now,
doesn't it?

Dylan Smith writes:

Why is it therefore deemed not only acceptable but entirely normal
that there is no in-flight fuel cross check in the form of a gauge that
at least gives a reasonable indication of how much fuel you have left?

Some pilots apparently love aviation so much that they're willing to die in
the cockpit.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On Apr 2, 4:43 pm, DR wrote:
chris wrote:
On Mar 30, 5:19 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
chris writes:
None of the small aircraft I have ever flown has had TCAS.. Are you
sure you got that right ???
By "often used," I meant "when present on small aircraft, this is the type
usually used," because it's cheaper. I don't think TCAS is really present
very much on small GA aircraft, but I don't have actual figures. Since good
avionics represent a substantial portion of the total cost of an aircraft, it
follows that one wouldn't see advanced avionics that often on aircraft that
are not otherwise very expensive. Who would install $2 million of avionics on
a $90,000 aircraft?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

I fear it's even worse than you think, at least in this country, where
private aircraft ownership is quite rare. Most light a/c are either
aero club owned, i.e. 172 / Cherokee, or commercial, like Senecas and
the like.. And on the whole, avionics tends to get neglected. The
vast majority of club a/c wouldn't have GPS, let alone glass cockpits
or TCAS. I have seen inside some commercial operated light a/c like
Senecas and Aztecs and you'd probably be horrified at how basic they
are. Just a couple of ADFs and VORs and that's all they get. Maybe a
DME thrown in for good measure...

And don't think they get maintained either. If the a/c came with IFR
gear and isn't being used for IFR, like at an aero club, when things
like DME and VOR break down they don't get fixed, they just get
placarded as inop. Same as fuel gauges. Of 9 planes at our club,
only 4 have working fuel gauges!! The rest are just placarded u/s.
And the only reason there are 4 planes that have gauges that work is 3
of them are brand new a/craft. The deal with fuel gauges is, we know
the fuel burn and we have a stick to dip the tank on preflight, what
do we need gauges for ???

Hi Chris,

Doesn't the MEL in part 91.509 say that fuel gauges are required... Are
you saying that the director CAA has deemed that working (not
necessarily accurate) fuel gauges are not required in your club -what gives?

Cheers MC- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

They have fuel gauges.. they just don't work :-)

On Apr 2, 9:33 pm, Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2007-04-01, chris wrote:

only 4 have working fuel gauges!! The rest are just placarded u/s.
And the only reason there are 4 planes that have gauges that work is 3
of them are brand new a/craft. The deal with fuel gauges is, we know
the fuel burn and we have a stick to dip the tank on preflight, what
do we need gauges for ???

That's a hazardous attitude, and a fuel exhaustion accident waiting to
happen. The fuel gauges should not be relied on - this is true - but
they should work as they provide a useful cross check.

I was new to the 1960 Cessna 182 which I was taking on a long cross
country trip. The night before, I checked the fuel to make sure I didn't
need to have it topped off, since I was leaving before the FBO would be
open. Looking into the tank, the fuel was at the top. I checked it again
the next morning as part of my preflight. The fuel level was the same.

I had calculated my fuel burn for the trip, which gave me an hour's
reserve on landing.

Halfway through the trip, the fuel gauges showed less fuel than my
calculations said the tanks should have, so I told ATC that I was going
to land short of my destination.

I then discovered that what looked like full wasn't really - probably
about 45 minutes off full. I could have ended up at my destination with
only 15 minutes of fuel. A go around, or a vexatious routing from ATC
could quite easily have exhausted that.

The important lesson is to be conservative with long flights in an
unfamiliar aircraft, and that fuel gauges are a very useful cross check.
How many fuel exhaustions have happened because fuel gauges have been
improperly maintained, could not provide a cross check, and the pilot's
calculation was wrong? Or the pilot had less fuel than he thought? Or
there was a leak?

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute:http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

I would like fuel gauges that work, no question. But I have also
heard of accidents where people rely on their gauges and fail to dip
the tanks and run out of fuel because the gauges aren't accurate.