I believe that it is a huge mistake to teaach student pilots that at a
given power setting their aircraft will average x gallons per hour.

My 172 averages 8 gallons per hour.
About 18 months ago, on a 2.5 hour flight it averaged 12 gallons per
hour. - Fortunately I had full tanks on takeoff.
6 months ago the same thing happened - fuel consumption went from 8
gallons per hour to 12 gallons per hour.
again I was lucky - I had departed with full tanks.

On both occasions it was the same problem. A seal had failed on one of
my fuel caps and the fuel was siphoning out when airborne.

We KNOW that this can and does happen. So why do we continue to tell
students that if they plan for 8 GPH they will be safe?
It simply isn't true, and it is going to kill someone.

How many students are taught to dip the tanks AFTER they land?
None.
And, as most of them are renting, they go away happily believing that
they burned 8 gph - so they continue to plan that way - even if they are
actually burning a lot more.

So - to all of the instructors out there - why not just teach them to
never trust anything, and if they regularly rent the same aircraft, dip
tanks before and after, so they KNOW the fuel consumption, rather than
continue to operate on some totally arbitrary figure based on a new
aircraft, rather that the 30 year old junker that they actually fly.

OK. Pet peeve over. We now retun you to your regular programming

Tony

--

Tony Roberts
PP-ASEL
VFR OTT
Night
Cessna 172H C-GICE



In article ,
(Robert M. Gary) wrote:

The local news is reporting that a local CFI (with over 30,000 hours
of instruction giving since the early 1960's) ran out of gas just
short of the airport after picking up a P210 and flying back from
Texas to California. Boy, if it can happen to him, it can happen to
anyone. It will be interesting to see the final facts. Perhaps the
plane was burning way more gas than it should have (the plane had been
bought that day).

-Robert




--

Tony Roberts
PP-ASEL
VFR OTT
Night
Cessna 172H C-GICE