fuel calculations aren't this hard.
 

jesus freakin' christ. i walk into the school today to catch my afternoon helicopter relay mission flight and was told that a dude that i'd been bitching about for the last 2 weeks give or take ran out of fuel. :banghead: lesse here. when i flew over the aftermath, oh, and yes he's ok. just a severe case of rectal cranial disorder, i counted 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - FIVE safer places to land than what he chose. 1 highway, 1 country road (paved) 2 dirt roads and the beach. yet we get this:

how ironic is my sig line now?

oh and then after i got over my relay position i got a radio call from helio base saying that they got their towers fixed and our job is done. oh well, it was fun while it lasted. (no relation to the crash)

I am NOT a piolot but I think I could have found a MUCH better place to put that plane down !!!!!! Hell there is a road just at the TOP of the pic , and Smoother ground as well !!!

Didn't you previously say in another sage sig that if you have to crash it, fly it in as far as possible? Maybe quitting before the field meant prematurely ending...

Ok, I don't know. All my airtime is strictly ballistic.

Did he actually run out and glide in there or powered in on the last fumes?
If he was gliding and the wind was the wrong way it may not have been a choice.
Or he's an idiot. :)

So, is there an airplane equivalent to AAA? If you put it down without breaking it somewhere you can get it in the air again, can they just run you out a can of AvGas to get you to the nearest airport, or would they have to take the wings off and tow it in?

During this last week, the sun spirted out one of the largest Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) that caused moderate radio interference. Reminded me of the movie Apollo 13 where they tell Gene Krantz that there is a typhoon bearing down on the landing site. What more could go wrong. Anyway, did those diminished radio conditions affect your radio relays?

I *am* a pilot and I have to agree with plthijinx, there are MUCH better places to set down, even gliding, although there's NO excuse for running out of fuel.

Looks like he nosed over to boot. THAT airplane won't be flying for a while. And that pilot shouldn't be flying again at all. What a moron!

Brian

you nailed it brian. he picked the only mud hole in that sector.
here's the break down:
engine mount: toast
firewall:no damage (that's REAL good news)
wings:ok, a few bumps and bruises
verticle stabilizer: a little crunched but not too bad
nose gear: ?? not sure but i'm sure it's toast.

rumor has it he was at 5,000 feet when this happened. *fucknut* is an idiot!

no tw as long as we were at our posts, we communicated normally.

bruce: fucknut is an idiot

no equivilant to AAA wolf, mike went out there last night and trailered the airplane and drove it to our sister airport where we can make repairs

yeah, i had quoted bob hoover bigv. "fly the thing as far into the crash....." which fucknut didn't do. this is a perfect example of what not to do when the engine quits for whatever reason.

well i'm going to go hang at the airport, if we go to the sister airport i'll snap some pics. i'll be going over there eventually anyway.....plt

How many minutes is 5000 feet if you know what you're doing? The glider pilots can stay up all day...

Hey! Don't they put gas guages on those things? I mean, wouldn't he have noticed the needle starting to point down to that dread "E" and maybe put in a call to the nearest county airport? If there WAS no gas guage, I'd think he would do like I used to do when I had an old beater car with a broken gas guage. "Let's see, I just put in 10 gallons of gas. This old clunker gets 15mpg, so I'm set for 150 miles". I'd then make a note of the odometer reading, add 150 to that, and tape the mileage estimate to my dash, after subtracting 5 miles for good luck. When I hit 145 miles, I knew it was time to start looking for a Conoco sign.

And yeah, while he wasn't in a glider, he must have still had a certain amount of momentum going for him, and its my understanding that when you land, you put the plane into a brief stall, anyhow, so he must have had a couple of miles to pick out his landing spot. "Highway? Ummm, maybe not. Wouldn't want to land on a little old lady out for a Sunday drive. Dirt road? Perfect! Less chance of an encounter with an automobile and less chance of damaging the plane. I'll take it!"

But what do I know? I'm just a dumb cowgirl. :eyebrow:

UT at 5,000 and you "trim" for best glide you have roughly 10 minutes. gliders are built different so they can last up there. not too sure about their aerodynamics. so if there is anyone here on the cellar that would care to elaborate...go for it.

mari i got on his ass a little more than a week ago about not trusting the guages. i asked him how much fuel he had and he told me what the guages said when i was expecting a time endurance. yeah, they give you an idea of how much you have but NEVER, EVER, trust cessna fuel guages. you do what you did in your old car. you have X gallons, you burn Y gallons an hour. plug it in, do the math and you know your endurance.

LOL I remember those gauges. Accurate to within 1/2 tank. I *never* looked at them. I used the Hobbs meter and my trusty watch.

Plan the flight and fly the plan. - old flight instructor