One can be flown by two people out & back to some distant place, the
other may not be able to. This is more important in the West and
Alaska, I suppose...

Right you are. And, as I pointed out, this is a fine line.

My rule is this: In a plane without a bathroom (or the ability to stand up)
a five hour range is probably the maximum desirable or necessary. Thus, in
order to gauge utility I start measuring useful load at the five hour fuel
capacity.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"
"Martin Kosina" wrote in message
om...
If you can carry a larger payload with full tanks, you can obviously
carry
that weight farther than the poor guy who has to leave fuel on the
ground.
Better yet, if you off-load some of that fuel, you can carry an even
GREATER
payload. This gives you a far greater degree of flexibility than you
would
have if you could NOT carry that payload with full tanks.

I really like you too, Dave -- but I fail to see why you cannot
understand
this very simple concept:

I think he was just pointing out we may not be comparing apples to
apples - take some of the Cessnas with long range tanks, they have
laughable "full fuel payload", yet they are obviously the more
flexible airplane next to an identical model that has 10-15 gallons
less capacity.