Another fuel story.

One of my partners had just returned from Tulsa, OK Saturday evening. He
landed after the FBO closed and couldn't refuel the plane so, I fueled it
Sunday morning before my family and I headed out to Grand Rapids, MI. I put
in 113.5 gallons.

With nice winds aloft, we made it from STE to 9D9 in 1.3 hours, door to
door. We spend the day with the in-laws and then departed that afternoon.
During my pre-flight I checked the fuel levels. I was looking into the sun
and couldn't see the fuel in our outboard tanks. Stuck my fingers in and
couldn't feel any fuel. I checked the inboards and I could see they were
down about 2 inches. I'd switched tanks once during our short trip.

So I'm telling myself.... "Self, you just pumped 113.5 gallons of gas into
this beast and you can't see any fuel in the outboard tanks?! Even with
headwinds on the way home, it would only take 75 gallons MAX, (3x normal
fuel burn) but do you really want to be so stupid as to take off without
topping off?" Self responded by saying "Nope, you don't know where that
fuel went, the outboard tanks could be entirely empty, it might have just
got sucked out the caps and the inboards could be down to 25 gallons each,
that's 2 hours flight time MAX." So I topped everything off.... it took 34
gallons total. Just about right.

It was un-nerveing enough not to be able to see the fuel in the outboard
tanks, even though I knew it was just because I was looking into the sun.
My family was waiting on the ramp in a 18 knot wind waiting for me to tell
them to get in the plane. The in-laws, my brother in-law and his kids were
waiting to watch us take off. The extra trouble of starting up a twin and
taxiing to the fuel pumps all combined to put pressure on me to get going
but I just told myself that is exactly how people end up on the bottom of
Lake Michigan. Fueling probably added 15 minutes to the end of our flying
day. Not a very big deal considering the possible consiquenses.

Jim