Some random
experiences in Fuel (mis)management.
Gotcha #1. Left Madison, Wisc, minetes
ahead of a rapid moving cold front in a C-180 ambhibian. Full
tanks, checked cover on old style fuel tank - appeared on (the wing is
12+ feet in the air) so didn't crawel the ladder! On way to
Midway airport, swithched tanks over what is now Tri-State
expressway. Tank # 2 empty because cap loose under the old style
cover. Landed without incident on the Tri-state (prior to
concrete being laid.)
Gotcha
#2. In a T-6. Three hours Fuel in two tanks, switching
tanks every 1/2 hour. Made fuel selector swith twice without
problem, on third switch attempt the selector handle broke off.
Now unable to fly on fuller tank, so diverted to alternate airport and
landed. No passenger in back seat as there is a second selector
there. Henceforth carried a vicegrip as do about 1/3 of the
knowledgeable T-6 pilots.
Gotcha
#3. In a twin comanche with tip tanks. Heated hangar in N.
Wisc. Drained during preflight a small amount of fuel from the
twins peculiar low point central drain. Left for Florida, with
full mains, full aux and full tips. My proceedure is to taxi out
on the mains, switch to aux for run up then back to mains for take
off. Uneventfull cruise at 8500'. Full aux and tips
showing on the gauges. At cruise I swith to left Aux tank, engine
quites, back to main everything ok. Same with rt engine.
Analysis frozen water in both aux tanks. After landing and over
night in heated hanger drain over a gallon of water from sump.
A/c always hangared!
Gotcha#4. I was checking out a CFI in a
tailwheel Aeronca Champ, 85hp it had a fuel system not unlike a Lnc-2.
Header tank, 2 wing tanks that gravity feed to the header. The
CFI "student" checks the fuel. " half full header, half full
wing aux tanks". We were only going to do touch and goes in
Sedona, AZ. After 2-3 landings we turned on the aux which
drains into the mains so as to continue circuits and the 4th
landing was "dead stick".
Moral of the
story(s), is that; when possible I fly on the top half of the tanks
and enjoy the luxury of capacitance gauges, fuel flow/totalizers and
hopefully no more GOTCHA'S.
Bob
Mitchell
L320
I rely heavily on the fuel
totalizer in the Velocity. On refueling, it is invariably
accurate to within a gallon on a 30-70 gallon burn, but there is
one scenario where reliance on the totalizer can leave you in the
lurch, and a bad one at that. If a leak develops upstream of the
fuel totalizer sensor, or you leave a fuel cap off, you can be
draining or vacuuming a large fraction of your fuel overboard, but the
fuel totalizer does not recognize this loss, nor will you, if you rely
only on the totalizer.
Accordingly, we need a means of
sensing, or directing reading of, the fuel left in the tank(s) to know
that we haven't had an unexpected loss and that we can rely on the
fuel totalizer.
Chuck
Jensen