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