Micah wrote:

 

 

Hi Micah, congrats on more than 100 hours in your Legacy!  I have less than 15 hours on my Legacy.  (I'm keeping two running totals:  one for tach time and one for flight time, which means I never know how many hours I have when someone asks.)

 

I tested my useable fuel by running a tank dry while orbiting over the runway.  Each tank took almost exactly 30 gallons to fill it to a fat finger's width below the bottom of the metal filler neck.  How many gallons did it take to fill each of your tanks back up?

 

By the way, for those of you who haven't tried it, running a tank dry went as expected (and hoped).  I had my eyes glued on the fuel pressure gage and my hand on the fuel selector.  I thought the fuel pressure would fluctuate in advance of the tank running dry, but the (metered) pressure went from 11 psi to about 5 psi in the blink of an eye.  (The pressure may have gone to zero, but 5 psi was the last reading I saw before turning my attention to switching tanks.)  The engine didn't change much; I think RPM and manifold pressure stayed pretty much the same, but I could feel the sudden slowing of the airplane and it was quieter, but there was still a lot of noise, nothing like I would expect in a glider.  Also in about the blink of the eye, I switched tanks and turned the boost pump on low and the engine returned to normal instantly.  In fact, it came back so fast that later I wondered if it really died.

 

John Deakin has an interesting article on AvWeb recommending running tanks dry as a routine procedure:  http://www.avweb.com/news/pelican/182044-1.html    Despite the fact that it worked as advertised the two times I tried it, I don't think I will do it routinely because I was uncomfortable doing it and I expect my passenger would be even more uncomfortable.  But if I ever got in a situation where I needed to, I would.

 

So long as I'm this far off topic, I might just as well add that I changed oil and cleaned the gascolator on Friday, both for the first time.  The Andair gascolator bowl had maybe 50 grains of something that looked like rust and felt gritty like sand.  They were smaller than grains of sand on the beach.  There was no water in the bowl.  The filter screen was completely clean, with only one or two stray pieces of white fibers that looked like cotton.  Except for the electric fuel pump, I don't have any iron in the fuel system and don't know where the rusty looking stuff came from.  I washed out the wings with water before attaching them to the airplane and the rust may have been in the airport water system.

 

Dennis Johnson

Legacy RG N52PT