On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:02:46 +0000, Neil Gould wrote:

Recently, Greg Copeland posted:

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:21:16 +0000, Neil Gould wrote:
Besides being pointless? How about being uneccesarily risky?


[...]
So what risk factor can you assign to what is more or less, a
non-event?

It's a non-event *if* the tank runs dry at a convenient time and place,
*if* the engine restarts (I've had one heck of a time restarting a warm
fuel-injected engine at times), etc. Even if these risks are low, they're
still uneccesary, so I'll stand by my opinion. ;-)


At a convenient time? That's the difference between running out of fuel
and running the tank dry. After all, if you chosen to run the tank dry,
it better be because its both a convenient time and place. If you allowed
your self to run out of fuel at an "inconvenient time and place", then you
ran out fuel, which is not what is advocated here. Remember, this is
part of a fuel management strategy and not blindly flying until the tank
reads empty and the engine sputters.

Deakin's article clearly spells out that there are some planes which
this should not be done on. Fuel injected engines is probably one such
category to not try this on because of vapor-lock issues. In most
carborated engines, in most planes, I must admit it sure sounds like a
non-event to me. Again, as even Deakin points out, there are exceptions
to every rule; whereby he even provides one.

Also, I do thank you for sharing your opinion.

As for the "why", John Says, "I'd like to take a look at fuel
management, and since my method sometimes calls for running a tank
dry, let's get that out of the way first." In other words, its his
strategy for fuel management which lets him known and understand how
much he really has in reserve and how much can he get out of the
"unuseable". Should he have an event where he has to bite into his
reserves, he never has to say, "I sure hope I have enough. I wonder
how much is there".

What's the point in all of this? If he can't figure out fuel consumption
rates from the amount of fuel that he replaces after the flight, what good
is running the tanks dry? One is supposed to have a 45-minute reserve VFR;
that's quite a bit more fuel than running dry. The whole idea is *not* to
run dry. To me, it sounds like a fools game to do otherwise.

Fair enough.


Neil

Greg