On Feb 21, 12:15*pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
How were you able to fly in the meantime? A plane is not airworthy
without a working fuel gauge for each tank (91.205b9). Can one get a
waiver for this sort of thing?

In an incredible display of aviation daring...I placarded the gauge as INOP,
and flew the plane. *

Yikes. You didn't even take the precaution of always using the other
tank when landing, rather than using the one that doesn't tell you if
it's about to run dry?

Placarding INOP is for optional devices. Working fuel gauges are
required for airworthiness.

I never use the fuel gauges for anything other than
passing reference, since we do everything by visual inspection and the timer
in our Garmin GTX-327 transponder.

How do visual inspection or your timer tell you if you've got an in-
flight fuel leak? That's an important reason for the fuel-gauge
requirement.

If I wasn't looking for something not working in the panel (a habit I've
formed after a decade of "maintenance-induced failures") I'm not sure how
long it would have taken for me to accidentally notice it wasn't working.

Yikes.