That is bothersome. I need an hour of fuel upon landing in my airplane, not so in my car. I think that a good pilot always knows how much fuel he has. It equates to "options" when things go differently than planned. If a pilot doesn't care how much fuel he has, I'm not comfortable flying with him. It's not the same a car. I can pull over and hitch-hike home in a car.

This car-airplane analogy is a slippery slope.

I use my airplane for serious traveling. Long-range traveling. Knowing how much fuel I have is no different than knowing how much airspeed I have. Both are critical to accomplishing a safe flight. I just made a max range flight--safely--non-stop by being able to know exactly how much fuel I had. Otherwise, I would have had to take an our longer to make a fuel stop. We beat the weather in by about 45 minutes. It sure would have been a dicier flight if I'd had to make a fuel stop and fight the nasty weather. Instead, I completed a max-range trip safely and efficiently. You would lose a lot of usefulness in an airplane where there is no FF or fuel quantity information for that type of flying. If all you do is tool around and never for more than an hour and care not about range, I think a J-3 Cub would be a good choice.

Walter


On Mar 3, 2005, at 1:34 PM, Matt Hapgood wrote:

I've been thinking about the fuel flow thing more and more lately.  And since I love analogies so much, I'm going to make another... 
 
 How many of you know what the gas mileage of your car/SUV is?  Not what the sticker said when you bought it, but the actual mileage every time you fill up?  I'll venture that it is a relatively small percentage of you.  In the airplane world we seem to care a LOT more about fuel burn than we do in cars.  Why is that?  Is it because our planes are weight and range limited whereas, for all practical matters, our cars aren't? 
 
I personally don't really care whether I burn 8 GPH or 9 GPH in cruise.  I'm not going to fuel plan that precisely.  I can't.  I don't always know whether I will fly at 6,000' or 12,000' and that makes a WHOLE lot larger difference in fuel planning than leaning.  And just as in the car, I'd land and fuel up if I got lower on fuel than expected on a trip. 
 
I'll make a second venture - that the folks with FADEC don't care nor know as much about fuel burn as others do.  In fact, I'll bet they couldn't tell you with anywhere near the level of accuracy that Walter or others out there can.  Why?  Because we don't stare at the fuel burn gauge, just as you couldn't care less about MPG of your SUV.  It just doesn't matter.  We have a pretty good idea of burn rate, and that's good enough.
Matt