Post-Annual Flight

wrote in message
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On Feb 21, 10:36 pm, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
Mine bounce around so much they are useless.

Then your plane isn't airworthy.

Wrong! They work exactly as designed and as installed by the manufacturer.


Often times book learnin doesn't transulate to real life.

Perhaps not. But flying without basic required equipment often
translates to real death.

"B A R R Y" wrote in message
et...
Jay Maynard wrote:
On 2008-02-21, wrote:
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.

How does a fuel gauge that's so unreliable that you can't trust it to
within
a quarter tank tell you whether you've got a fuel leak? That description
applies to every aircraft I flew during my primary training, late 1970s
vintage Cessna and Piper and Grumman products (this was in the late
1980s).
I was taught to verify the tank's level on preflight, and use time and
consumption per hour to figure usage.

That's my point.

Is "Airplane Sense" a simmer? G

He certainly has not flown very many types of aircraft if he puts any trust
in fuel gages.

On Feb 22, 7:15*am, B A R R Y wrote:
Jay Maynard wrote:
How does a fuel gauge that's so unreliable that you can't trust it to within
a quarter tank tell you whether you've got a fuel leak? That description
applies to every aircraft I flew during my primary training, late 1970s
vintage Cessna and Piper and Grumman products (this was in the late 1980s).
I was taught to verify the tank's level on preflight, and use time and
consumption per hour to figure usage.

That's my point.

Is "Airplane Sense" a simmer? *G

Only when I'm not flying for real.

I've rented dozens of planes throughout the US, and I don't recall any
in which the fuel gauges didn't perform well enough to provide at
least a rough cross-check of my calculations.

Look, aviation safety is about redundancy. And it's about being
prepared for unlikely but serious problems. So I find it disconcerting
to hear from pilots who habitually don't bother to perform a simple,
potentially useful cross-check, or who even habitually fly without the
required properly-working equipment to enable them to do so.

On Feb 22, 8:51*am, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
wrote in message

...

On Feb 21, 10:36 pm, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
Mine bounce around so much they are useless.

Then your plane isn't airworthy.

Wrong! They work exactly as designed and as installed by the manufacturer.

You're saying the manufacturer designed your gauges to "bounce around
so much they are useless"?

Even if that were true, it wouldn't make your plane airworthy. If a
tank's fuel gauge doesn't give you information about the tank's fuel
level, then it fails to meet the airworthiness requirement 91.205b9.

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 05:33:50 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

On Feb 22, 6:01*am, Peter Clark
wrote:
Yup, no disagreement. I just meant that an inop gauge (in addition to
a legal, working one for the same tank) doesn't automatically violate
91.205b9.

It would if that working guage isn't TSO'd as a primary guage and/or
two factory installed guages are called out by the equipment list
and/or KOEL.

Agreed. (By 'automatically' I meant 'necessarily'. Sorry for my
imprecision.)

No worries.

On Feb 21, 5:30*pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
http://www.metcoaire.com/products/pr...straight.shtml

Scroll down to 'Replacement Fiberglass *Tail Cone' section.
Metco's fiberglass parts are first rate quality.

Thanks for the link!

The repaint can't be all that bad. We had a custom paint job on old
wheelpants accurately duplicated onto a set of new ones by a local
auto paint & body shop for only a couple hundred dollars materials &
labor.

All the stripes on the plane (3 different colors) are on that tail cone,
plus the base coats of gray and white. * What a PIA to do, but I'm afraid it
will have to be done.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay, you might want to try and take your broken tail tip and your new
tail tip to a shop that paints motorcycle helmets or to an airbrush
guy and have them paint the new one to match the old one. I'm not
sure if anyone else had suggested this, I haven't read the entire
thread yet, the part about the 'in-op' sticker is interesting.

Not having ever owned an airplane and looking into owning one in the
future, I found your write up a good read,

Wil

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:29:23 -0800 (PST), William Hung wrote:

Not having ever owned an airplane and looking into owning one in the
future, I found your write up a good read,

Yeah... it convinced me to keep on renting.

:- )


--
Dallas

In rec.aviation.owning Bob Noel wrote:
In article ,
wrote:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but a flow gauge has no way of sensing
the amount of fuel actually in the tank, does it? So it has no way of
indicating a leak, which is the whole crux of the matter.

You keep talking about detecting a leak. Have you flown a comanche?
Do you consider the pa-24-260 to be unsafe because the fuel gauge
can only read one tank at a time? How often does a tank develop
a leak in flight?

How often does an oil leak develop in flight? Might as well do away with
the oil pressure guage by that reasoning.

Most in flight gas "leaks" in GA aircraft are from the filler cap not
being secure.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

wrote in message
...
On Feb 22, 8:51 am, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
wrote in message

...

On Feb 21, 10:36 pm, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
Mine bounce around so much they are useless.

Then your plane isn't airworthy.

Wrong! They work exactly as designed and as installed by the manufacturer.

You're saying the manufacturer designed your gauges to "bounce around
so much they are useless"?

Even if that were true, it wouldn't make your plane airworthy. If a
tank's fuel gauge doesn't give you information about the tank's fuel
level, then it fails to meet the airworthiness requirement 91.205b9.

Then there are thousands if aircraft out there that are unairworthy. That
is not true and you are still wrong.

"Dave Stadt" wrote in
:


wrote in message
.
.. On Feb 22, 8:51 am, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
wrote in message

.
..

On Feb 21, 10:36 pm, "Dave Stadt" wrote:
Mine bounce around so much they are useless.

Then your plane isn't airworthy.

Wrong! They work exactly as designed and as installed by the
manufacturer.

You're saying the manufacturer designed your gauges to "bounce around
so much they are useless"?

Even if that were true, it wouldn't make your plane airworthy. If a
tank's fuel gauge doesn't give you information about the tank's fuel
level, then it fails to meet the airworthiness requirement 91.205b9.

Then there are thousands if aircraft out there that are unairworthy.
That is not true and you are still wrong.


It is true. All a fuel gauge will tell you accurately is that it is mounted
in the panel.

Bertie