Fuel Gauge Inop VFR Day

George Patterson wrote:
Ice blonde wrote:

I still think its better to run out in a car, than a plane, but maybe
I'm just too cautious.


If you run out of gas in a car, you pull over to the side of the road,
right?

Well, if you run out in a plane, you do exactly the same thing. Only the
road is a few thousand feet below you. :-)

And where I live, it may not be a road, but rather a forest. Just a tad
less convenient than pulling over to the side of the road. :-)

Matt

"George Patterson" wrote

If you run out of gas in a car, you pull over to the side of the road,
right?

Well, if you run out in a plane, you do exactly the same thing. Only the
road is
a few thousand feet below you. :-)

Right, plus you have a lot of time to figure out where you are going to park
it. g
--
Jim in NC

("Morgans" wrote)
there, I had to get that out of my chest eventually,

By the way, the saying (in the US, anyway) is to "get that -off- my
chest." g


I prefer Sylvain's version ...better visuals. :-)


Montblack
Aliens (1986)

Nope, sorry, Jimmer.

The fuel gauge is supposed to point to "empty" when the USEABLE fuel is
gone. When you empty the tank, the useble and unuseable fuel is drained.

BZZZT.

Jim



"Morgans" wrote in message
...

Could you not empty the fuel tank, and then, the fuel gauge pointing to
empty is correct?

Just a thought.
4

"Peter Duniho" wrote in

I would agree that, if I had to choose between running out of gas in a car
and running out of gas in an airplane, that I'd choose the car every time
(absent any specific knowledge of the situation, of course...I'll choose
running out of gas in an airplane within gliding distance of an airport
over running out of gas in a car just in time for the car to roll to a
stop on some train tracks, with the 70mph commuter due in 15 seconds ).

Smiley acknowledged. Fifteen seconds gets you and everyone else a safe
distance away. Every time. Pick a plane you would rather not be flying
dead stick.

moo

"Happy Dog" wrote in message
. ..
Smiley acknowledged.

You're missing the point.

Fifteen seconds gets you and everyone else a safe distance away.
Every time.

False. You have no way of knowing whether "Fifteen seconds gets you and
everyone else a safe distance away". Even assuming you and everyone else
can exit the vehicle in that time (and that's far from assured), train
wrecks send lots of stuff flying, including entire train cars. I certainly
wouldn't want to be within even a 15 second's run of a train wreck, and in
real life, you'd have used up a significant chunk of that 15 seconds just
getting out of the vehicle.

In any case, it's a SINGLE HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION. My parenthetical point
that you so joyously chose to attempt to pick apart was simply that, while
generally speaking fuel exhaustion in a car is less of a problem than in an
airplane, one can theorize comparative situations in which the airplane
scenario is more desirable than the car scenario.

Frankly, if you can't imagine a dozen such scenarios, you either aren't
trying, or you have no imagination.

Pick a plane you would rather not be flying dead stick.

Why? What's that got to do with anything? Pick any random airplane, other
than a glider, and I'd "rather not be flying dead stick". Airplanes work a
lot better when the engine is running.

Pete

George Patterson wrote:
Ice blonde wrote:
It can be fun getting the gauges on some airplanes to read anywhere near
accurately. Even replacing gauges or senders or both will often not get
them any more accurate.

Why?

Aircraft fuel tanks tend to be fairly short, compared to auto tanks. They also
tend to be wider and longer than a comparably-sized fuel tank in a car. It's not
economical to manufacture special sending units for aircraft, however, so
outfits like Cessna and Piper use units made for cars.


There are other reasons they're inaccurate, too. The Cessna spec is
for the float to not touch the top of the tank (the float's tapping on
an aluminum tank can wear a hole in it), and so the thing reads full,
or even overfull, when the float reaches the upper limit of its travel.
That's before another significant amount of fuel goes into the tank and
submerges the float. The tank will therefore read full (or overfull)
for some time before it begins to drop.
The float is usually hinged to the sender near the top of the
tank. The movement of the rheostat in the sender is linear but the
hinge's location creates a sine function to the indication, with the
top travel being rather slow and the lower travel moving much more
quickly. It implies that the tank has more volume in the top than in
the bottom, which is usually the opposite of the actual tank shape.
Odd-shaped tanks create their own accuracy problems. The fuel
level's descent in the tank is not linear, while consumption is, and
the gauges reflect level drop, not volume drop.
Senders are often located in the inboard end of wing tanks, and
the dihedral keeps the sender up until the fuel is well down. More
inaccuracies.
And we pay big bucks for this sort of thing!

Dan

It's not economical to manufacture special sending units for aircraft, however, so outfits like Cessna and Piper use units made for cars.

Just curious - how much is a sender from Piper? How much is a sender
from Chrysler? When a four dollar microsowitch costs $750 from Piper
(we had to replace one) the economics of manufacturing special sending
units doesn't make me feel sorry for the aicraft companies.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

wrote:

The float is usually hinged to the sender near the top of the
tank. The movement of the rheostat in the sender is linear but the
hinge's location creates a sine function to the indication, with the
top travel being rather slow and the lower travel moving much more
quickly.

That situation is easily fixed by using an L-shaped float wire.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

don't you always use time to "guage" how much fuel you've burned?
Not exclusively. My Mooney developed an issue with the selector at one
point where it would burn some fuel off the non-selected tank. You
don't notice that by timing.