Full tanks on a 320/360 is < 250 lbs, or a heavy passenger.

When you calculate the theoretical savings you MIGHT obtain not filling the tanks vs. the empirical evidence of greater safety from ALWAYS filling the tanks, I'll have to say I'm quite willing to shell out a few extra dollars on the side of safety.  Too, in every Lancair I've seen there is only one KNOWN quantity of gas for each tank - FULL.  Every other condition is "unknown."  However, that still does allow having at least one tank FULL and the wings "not full" and still know you have enough gas for a local flight.  I have taken off once with only a full header tank - that was to go get cheaper gas at another airport.

But don't let my caution stop you from taking of with an unknown quantity of gas.

Merry Christmas, all!

:-)

mjrav@comcast.net wrote:

Lancairians,

I can't help but comment also.

Those who routinely top up the tanks on local flights may have a misguided sense of being conservative.

Our high performance aircraft are that way due to a combination of aerodynamics, power and weight.

Carrying around a whole lot of excess fuel compromises that performance.

There may be hundreds of possible scenarios where having less weight would improve safety.  I'm sure we can all think of some.

The aircraft handling, responsiveness and corresponding joy of flying is also improved with reduced gross weight.

I'm very comfortable with an hour or so reserve.  I can get to maybe 100 other airports within a 200 mile radius.

 

Mark Ravinski

360  

 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Casey" <casey.gary@yahoo.com>
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2009 8:52:52 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [LML] Re: Fuel Planning

Thanks, Rob, for posting the results.  The ones that said "top it" didn't abide by the spirit of the question :-) in that I don't know how many minutes of fuel that equates to, but there were enough replies in minutes.  The technician in me couldn't resist doing some math:
The average planned fuel remaining was 63 minutes, or about 30 minutes in each tank.  I guess that would work, but for me that would be about 7 gallons in each tank, at my low fuel warning setting.  I know I would get an additional verbal warning from my usual right seat crewmember :-(.
The standard deviation of the answers was 33 minutes, a fairly large variation considering the average was 63 minutes.  A significant number of people would have in the vicinity of 30 minutes remaining.  In fact, 4 out of 12 would have 30 minutes or less.  One planned the flight with only 20 minutes remaining.
Of course, if I knew the minutes remaining of the ones that said "top it" the results would shift dramatically.
Gary


Fuel Planning
December 23, 2009 11:19:15 AM MST
From:
"Rob Logan" <Rob@Logan.com>
To:
"" <lml@lancair.net>
Thanks to those that responded to the fuel question. This is how it was
worded:

There is 30min of fuel in your plane.
You wanta meet your friends for lunch on this stunning VFR day.
You don't have any planned flights for the next few weeks.
The lunch stop's gas is the same price as as at your home field.
The lunch stop's runway is 5,000 at sea level.
The flight time to lunch is 30mins

How many mins of fuel do you add to your tanks for the flight?

Here is the summery in the form of:
in the plane + personal min + trip + extra

30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + top
30 + 30 + top
30 + 15 + full wings, not aux

30 + 30 + 60 + 60
30 + 120
30 + 120
30 + 120
30 + 120
30 + 30 + 30 + 30
30 + 30 + 60
30 + 30 + 30 + 15
30 + 15 + 30 + 15
30 + 15 + 30 + 5
30 + 0  + 60
30 + 60

common notes:

1) always top
2) add enough to get to lunch and home plus personal reserve
3) fill to a level one can directly observe fuel in tank.

                        Rob