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