Picture of the day

Gibbs505 said:
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The BA's are a great team. Here are some of my pictures from 1980 when I was up close and personal when they flew the McDonald Douglas A4 Skyhawks.

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Just before leaving the line.

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On their return from a practice.

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Notice anything different?

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Lead solo

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Back to normal, catch the difference?

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A few years later when the team flew the F/A 18 Hornets for the first time. The A4 demonstration team was about low and slow which made for a great show, however when they switched to the Hornets the demonstration evolved into shear power. Very impressive when standing right next to them when planes are lit up.

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Last but not least....."Fat Albert"

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kawicrash said:
I don't think Gimli was really the pilot's fault. This happened just when we were switcing to the metric system. The fuel was measured in kilos instead of pounds, so only 1/2 the correct amount was filled.
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There is usually a number of factors that all work together to cause an aviation accident, but in the end it is always the pilot's responsibility to confirm fuel quantity. In this case the aircraft's fuel gauges were blank, making it not airworthy, but he decided it was safe to fly as long as the tanks were physically checked. Then he used the wrong conversion factor to calculate the fuel load.

The Gimli Glider incident atleast had a happy ending. I've lost a few friends in plane crashes; the most recent one not confirming his fuel load.
 
kawicrash said:
I don't think Gimli was really the pilot's fault. This happened just when we were switcing to the metric system. The fuel was measured in kilos instead of pounds, so only 1/2 the correct amount was filled.
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An aircraft has a MEL - Minimum Equipment List. You can't fly unless everything on that list is working. Like the gas gauge. It was not working. They ran out of gas. Pilot's fault.

Sorry. Did not see the post above.

On my plane the gas gauge is in gallons. The performance calculations (range) are done in pounds of fuel per hour. It is sold in litres. I cheat and just think in terms of 10 gallons an hour, and full tanks are 65 gallons. I don't have to be a math whiz to figure out I have to be on the ground in 6.5 hours. I once got lost and got very low on fuel. I calculated I had to fly the last 20 miles at idle, coming down from 12,000 feet. I had 1 litre of fuel left when I filled up.

I have some sympathy for pilots who miscalculate, but we are supposed to be pros at the basics.
 
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Bubba Yugga said:
Here's a baby you wouldn't want to run dry:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/STUNNING-19...-OSHKOSH-034-GRAND-CHAMPION-034-/252737242618
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My old winger had to land a pristine Staggerwing gear up at Abbotsford a year or so ago. Apparently something broke in the gear unlock and wouldn't release with both the normal system and the emergency system. He burnt off most of the fuel and landed gear up on the grass beside the runway. Very little damage done and both him and his passenger walked away. Same guy gave me a ride on a CF-104 back in the early 70's.
 
bgcameron said:
There is usually a number of factors that all work together to cause an aviation accident, but in the end it is always the pilot's responsibility to confirm fuel quantity. In this case the aircraft's fuel gauges were blank, making it not airworthy, but he decided it was safe to fly as long as the tanks were physically checked. Then he used the wrong conversion factor to calculate the fuel load.

The Gimli Glider incident atleast had a happy ending. I've lost a few friends in plane crashes; the most recent one not confirming his fuel load.
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So he relied on the "drip sticks" and could not convert inches into liters.
 
bgcameron said:
If you are referring to my friend, it was actually the fuel type that he did not confirm. Jet fuel was put into his aircraft which uses aviation gasoline. Complacency kills, unfortunately.
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This is a fairly common accident. Some aircraft have "turbo" written on the engine cowling and the ground crew think "turbine" and fill it with jet fuel (kerosene). If all tanks are filled, there is a good chance of engine failure before take off, so no harm done. If tanks were just topped up, or only one tank filled, the engine failure could happen on take off (worst scenario) or on mid-flight, when he switched tanks. Not good if at night or over bad terrain.

I am guessing your friend lost engine just after lift off?
 
bgcameron said:
If you are referring to my friend, it was actually the fuel type that he did not confirm. Jet fuel was put into his aircraft which uses aviation gasoline. Complacency kills, unfortunately.
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I was referring to the Air Canada 767, which (at least at the time, had the only metric fuel quantity indication installed in a 767 anywhere in the world) so the pilots had to rely on the drip sticks which are basically dipsticks to be used upside down.

And + 1 on the "turbo" decals (meaning turbocharged recip, not turbine engine) getting people in trouble. The phrase "you can't trust'em an inch" applies to fuel handlers as well, sometimes.
 
ipscgraz said:
So he relied on the "drip sticks" and could not convert inches into liters.
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The ground staff dripped the tanks and then did the calculations to add the correct amount of fuel in litres for the departure flight but used pound numbers for the calculation instead of metric numbers. As a result, there was only 1/2 the amount of fuel uploaded. The ground staff didn't notice they used the wrong calculations and neither did the pilots when they accepted the aircraft for departure.

These 767's were fairly new to the fleet and were ordered with metric fuel systems and the norm at that company was pound aircraft at the time. It's quite common nowadays for an airline in Canada, or anywhere else to have a mixed fleet of pound and metric aircraft so fuel calculations on an aircraft with inop fuel gauges are pretty damn important.
 
This is a fairly common accident. Some aircraft have "turbo" written on the engine cowling and the ground crew think "turbine" and fill it with jet fuel (kerosene). If all tanks are filled, there is a good chance of engine failure before take off, so no harm done. If tanks were just topped up, or only one tank filled, the engine failure could happen on take off (worst scenario) or on mid-flight, when he switched tanks. Not good if at night or over bad terrain.

I am guessing your friend lost engine just after lift off?
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Yeah, he left Spokane in his Piper Malibu after having his tanks topped off with jet. Apparently there is an outfit in Spokane that does turbine conversions on the Malibu so I'm guessing an inexperienced fueler assumed it had a turbine.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2016/02/piper-pa-46-350p-malibu-mirage-c-gvzw.html
 
Learn by the experience of others.

When I learned to fly I was also a member of the Mooney Club (my plane was a Mooney). The other owner were very experienced pilots with lots of stories to tell and lessons to learn.

One lesson was to take off and climb on one tank and then, at cruise altitude, switch to another tank. That way, if there is a problem with the second tank (wrong gas, empty tank, won't feed) you have the option to switch back to a known good tank. Otherwise, if you run the first tank dry and then switch tanks, you can have a problem without a good easy solution.

The other thing they suggested was to note the airfields along the route so if there is a problem, you know immediately what direction to turn. I ha a little chart posted in the plane translating altitude (feet) to glide range in miles (plane had a 12:1 glide ratio). 10,000 feet AGL was worth 22 miles.

I had two in flight failures. Out of gas and loss of oil (oil line came of prop governor). In both cases I immediately knew where the nearest airport was. One was almost below me, and the other was a perfect straight in approach with maybe a mile to spare.

Your friend was sabotaged. If he had dipped his tanks, he would have smelled the problem, but he would not usually check or dip the tank unless he was about to make a max range trip.

I hope the family is suing the incompetent, negligent guy and the company. By changing the fuel nozzle, they overrode the safety system.
 
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