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Old November 30th 03, 10:49 PM
Jay
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Default Fuel dump switch in homebuilt

After reading some of the transcripts from the "Last Words" website,
where the flight engineers were dumping fuel when it became evident
that an emergecy landing was a certainty, it dawned on me that there
might be some benefit for a small plane as well. The less energy you
carry into a crash landing the better off you're going to be. And
since KE is mv^2, you get a proportional benfit from dumping the
weight of the fuel which might be 20% the weight of the airplane, and
the lower weight allows for a slower stall speed which cuts the V
factor, and since thats squared, it counts for a lot. And then of
course you may have a larger glide radius with that reduction in
weight in addition to the reduced fire potential upon landing and
breakup

Maybe a fuel selector switch that ports to a low pressure area near
the tail would act as a light weight solution to draw out the fuel
from the tanks. A safety wire that would have to be broken would be a
good idea so it isn't accentally selected. Like the WEP setting on
the WW2 fighters with water injection.