Aircraft fuel gauges suck! The tanks are very wide but shallow, so the readings are not very accurate. If you have the better capacitive fuel gauge senders that helps. If you think about a float gauge in a tank that is 4-6 inches tall, the float itself bottoms out at around 1/8 of a tank or so. Some airplanes have dihedral (wings angled up at the tips), so a sender at the bottom of the slope will read full at a half tank and one at the top of the slope would read empty at a half tank. What I really like is a fuel totalizer, this is an instrument that measures fuel flow and gallons used. Some of them are linked to the GPS and will set off an alarm if your fuel looks to be used up before you reach your destination. You too can buy capacitive fuel senders for not a lot of money. $500 or so will get you a totalizer, but many of them get inaccurate at the low flow rates typical of sailboats. * Air Canada famously ran their 757 out of fuel because the fuel gauges had crapped out and they were relying on the totalizer. Their plan would have worked but for metric system confusion. They did something like ask for 2,000 gallons of fuel and get 2,000 liters. They programmed the totalizer with 2,000 gallons added and it did not know any better. ** Some sadistic engineer configured some Beech Barons with 4 fuel tanks and 2 gauges. Entertainment ensues when you have the tanks switched to A and the gauges switched to B. How can we be out of gas, the gauges say full???
Joe Della Barba Coquina From: cenelson--- via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2023 10:44 PM To: Stus-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Cc: Korbey Hunt <kampf2...@hotmail.com>; Peter W. <typhoonpe...@gmail.com>; cenel...@aol.com Subject: [EXTERNAL] Stus-List Re: Accurate Fuel Tank Measurements II am not a pilot but suspect that given the consequences of running out of fuel at 10,000 feet, a different technology is used for airplane fuel tanks—if not, I am sure such tanks are calibrated more accurately than most boat fuel tanks! Charlie Nelson Water Phantom C&C 36 XL/kcb
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