Pilot crashes after mistaking voltmeter for fuel gauge

X3 Skier said:
The float gages on Cubs, Champs and Ercoupes are sort of hard to miss.

Cheers
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They're essentially permanently-attached floating dipsticks, no? But you'd still want to know how long your fuel was supposed to last, in case the stick got stuck by some weird fluke.
 
sarangan said:
The second thing I want to raise is, despite hundreds (thousands?) of pilots running out of fuel, why don't we yet have an alarm that starts blaring when the fuel drops below a certain threshold? We have a gear horn, stall horn, and annunciators for other things like electrical discharge, oil pressure etc... why have we not developed a simple alarm for fuel yet? Is it because we assume only idiots run out of fuel?
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My Sky Arrow has a LOW FUEL light. Pretty sure my Cirrus did as well.
 
FastEddieB said:
Ha ha! But sometimes controls can be almost comically too similar.

In a Citabria, Decathalon or Scout (I assume) the throttle and the trim - and carb heat - are relatively close together and have a similar rounded profile to the touch. I’ve known pilots to rest their left hands on or near the trim in cruise. I’ve also known pilots to accidentally apply full nose down trim when they meant to give full throttle. Rare, but poor design makes such things more possible.

citabria_left_interior.jpg
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I definitely have had trouble with mixing those up!

Another problem is that the right-hand vent knob is close to the parking brake knob. :eek2:
 
sarangan said:
I think we are probably being a little too harsh on this guy. It sounds like he was not properly instructed to include the fuel gauges in his scan during training. There is some blame to go around here.

The second thing I want to raise is, despite hundreds (thousands?) of pilots running out of fuel, why don't we yet have an alarm that starts blaring when the fuel drops below a certain threshold? We have a gear horn, stall horn, and annunciators for other things like electrical discharge, oil pressure etc... why have we not developed a simple alarm for fuel yet? Is it because we assume only idiots run out of fuel?
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Several of the planes I fly (all pistons) have a low fuel warning, it’s not uncommon. All of the ones that do have fairly recent avionics, i.e. G1000 or the similar glass retrofits. The reason most planes do not, of course, is that they are from the 70’s.
 
RussR said:
The reason most planes do not, of course, is that they are from the 70’s.
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Back when pilots were better trained and weren't used to having computers do their thinking and flying for them.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Back when pilots were better trained and weren't used to having computers do their thinking and flying for them.
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They also crashed a lot more in the 1970s, even the airlines. Automation is a good thing, as long as we use it to augment our flying skills rather than replace them.

For example, if your tank holds 20 gallons and you burn 6 gallons an hour, your tank's not still almost full after 3 hours' flying, no matter what your fuel gauge says. You need to be using your watch, with the gauge as a backup to detect abnormal situations.
 
What is going on, we have a thread from a guy wondering if his constant speed prop is putting oil in the fuel tanks, we have another thread wondering if you can shut the master off before the mags, and this thread where someone can't tell the difference between a volt meter and a fuel gauge.
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT???
 
Wagondriver said:
What is going on, we have a thread from a guy wondering if his constant speed prop is putting oil in the fuel tanks, we have another thread wondering if you can shut the master off before the mags, and this thread where someone can't tell the difference between a volt meter and a fuel gauge.
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT???
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Technology has done this. Our cars require only pushing a button to start, and after that one pushes one pedal to go and another to stop, and turn a wheel to point the thing. Oil and filter changes, along with any other maintenance, is done by other people. And there isn't much of that.

In the old days, folks had to know how to work a choke; not too much and not too little. They had to manually shift gears. Use a clutch pedal. Top up the oil at nearly every fuelling. They had to be able to read a road map. The driver that couldn't perform basic repairs on the roadside might be in trouble. Flat tires were common, for instance. Many drivers did their own maintenance in order to save money. It was an age of a lot less disposable income than now. In the house, automation is everywhere, and much of the stuff isn't repairable or is not worth fooling with. So now we have several generations that have no frame of reference in mechanical or electrical things, sometimes people that can barely change a light bulb. I encountered this when teaching Aircraft Systems, and had to start from the most basic principles before many of the students could grasp the operation of various parts of an aircraft.
 
David Megginson said:
They also crashed a lot more in the 1970s, even the airlines. Automation is a good thing, as long as we use it to augment our flying skills rather than replace them.
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The crashes I remember in the 1970s didn't seem to be related so much to the stupid stuff we see now. And automation HAS replaced the flying skills in some people. Just turn off his GPS while enroute and see the reaction when you ask him where we are and what is our ETA. I have witnessed that.
 
Dan Thomas said:
The crashes I remember in the 1970s didn't seem to be related so much to the stupid stuff we see now. And automation HAS replaced the flying skills in some people. Just turn off his GPS while enroute and see the reaction when you ask him where we are and what is our ETA. I have witnessed that.
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I expect the older pilots in the 1970s were complaining that new pilots with their VORs and DMEs had lost the skills of calculating groundspeed and distance, because they could just read the numbers off their panel. And the older pilots in the 1940s were complaining that new pilots with their ADFs had lost the ability to dead reckon and estimate wind-correction angles because they could just follow the needle (with a little bracketing). And the older pilots in the 1930s were complaining that new pilots with their airspeed indicators and stall horns had lost the ability to judge when they were near the stall by control feel and the "angels singing" in the vibration of a biplane's wire rigging.

It's always hard work to be a good pilot, and there will always be lazy ones who don't bother and become technology-dependent (whatever the tech is at the time). I agree that the more automation there is available, the more unearned confidence a bad pilot might have.
 
David Megginson said:
I expect the older pilots in the 1970s were complaining that new pilots with their VORs and DMEs had lost the skills of calculating groundspeed and distance, because they could just read the numbers off their panel. And the older pilots in the 1940s were complaining that new pilots with their ADFs had lost the ability to dead reckon and estimate wind-correction angles because they could just follow the needle (with a little bracketing). And the older pilots in the 1930s were complaining that new pilots with their airspeed indicators and stall horns had lost the ability to judge when they were near the stall by control feel and the "angels singing" in the vibration of a biplane's wire rigging.

It's always hard work to be a good pilot, and there will always be lazy ones who don't bother and become technology-dependent (whatever the tech is at the time). I agree that the more automation there is available, the more unearned confidence a bad pilot might have.
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When I learned to fly in the early '70s we had no VOR anywhere in the area, and no DME at all. The most sophisticated doodad was the ADF. As PPL students we did very little with it; we had to know map-reading and use the watch and compass. One learns the principles of navigation that way. With night or IFR flight you needed that ADF, maybe two of them. A lot of airports in the vicinity had nothing more than an NDB approach. It was a big deal to get a localizer. Later on I did a lot of my IFR training doing NDB approaches and a few VOR or DME arc approaches, as well as the usual ILS. No GPS.

The guys well before me used the radio range to get along in IMC or on dark nights. That's the device that morphed into the localizer.

Technology has corrupted a lot of skills. Anti-skid braking lets a driver just mash the pedal instead of feeling that slippery road, and it eventually gets that driver when the road is too slick for the computers to save him. Students use calculators to the extent that they don't understand math principles and are lost without that machine. I think some of them don't even understand what the input or output numbers represent.
 
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Dan Thomas said:
Technology has done this. Our cars require only pushing a button to start, and after that one pushes one pedal to go and another to stop, and turn a wheel to point the thing. Oil and filter changes, along with any other maintenance, is done by other people. And there isn't much of that.

In the old days, folks had to know how to work a choke; not too much and not too little. They had to manually shift gears. Use a clutch pedal. Top up the oil at nearly every fuelling. They had to be able to read a road map. The driver that couldn't perform basic repairs on the roadside might be in trouble. Flat tires were common, for instance. Many drivers did their own maintenance in order to save money. It was an age of a lot less disposable income than now. In the house, automation is everywhere, and much of the stuff isn't repairable or is not worth fooling with. So now we have several generations that have no frame of reference in mechanical or electrical things, sometimes people that can barely change a light bulb. I encountered this when teaching Aircraft Systems, and had to start from the most basic principles before many of the students could grasp the operation of various parts of an aircraft.
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Heck, in my wife’s car you don’t even have to turn on and off the lights or windshield wipers.
 
Salty said:
Heck, in my wife’s car you don’t even have to turn on and off the lights or windshield wipers.
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I don't even have to remember to rub down my Mazda 3 after a long run, or give it water and oats before I go to bed. And its stall never needs to be swept out. :)
 
Salty said:
Heck, in my wife’s car you don’t even have to turn on and off the lights or windshield wipers.
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Same here, and with my car, which is why I’ve left the lights on several times in my old F-150. I’ve lost the habit of making sure they’re off.
 
Dan Thomas said:
When I learned to fly in the early '70s we had no VOR anywhere in the area, and no DME at all. The most sophisticated doodad was the ADF. As PPL students we did very little with it; we had to know map-reading and use the watch and compass. One learns the principles of navigation that way. With night or IFR flight you needed that ADF, maybe two of them. A lot of airports in the vicinity had nothing more than an NDB approach. It was a big deal to get a localizer.
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That pretty-much describes my PPL and IFR training in 2002/03. While I did have an ILS handy here in Ottawa, they're much rarer in Canada, and until a few years ago, many smaller airports had only NDB approaches, (sometimes a VOR approach, but they were widely spaced even then, and RNAV overlays were starting to appear for both).

I still practice my map-reading, pilotage, and even E6B skills — if you don't use them regularly, you won't have them when you need them — and I've practiced both an NDB hold and an NDB approach (the last one within an hour of Ottawa) during the past few weeks, but I also invest a lot of time in learning to use RNAV effectively and efficiently, because practically speaking, that's how I fly most of my cross-country flights now.

There's a lot more to RNAV than "Direct-To and follow the magenta line," just like there's a lot more to ADF than "the needle points at the station." I've had my GTN 650 for four years now, I can almost recite the pilot manual off by heart, but I'm still learning something new almost every flight. Everything in aviation is a learning opportunity.
 
David Megginson said:
There's a much bigger problem than that. For most light pistons (except maybe a few with very advanced fuel systems), your primary way to monitor fuel levels is time flown, with the fuel gauges only as a backup/secondary.

No properly trained pilot — sport or otherwise — should have taken off without knowing how much fuel was in the tanks each time (either by dipping, visual confirmation of the tabs, or topping them off) and how long that fuel could be expected to last at their cruise power setting.

If the only fuel monitoring this pilot used was glancing at the gauges — even the correct ones — something was already seriously wrong, either with the pilot's training, or with the pilot's skill retention.
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I can't agree with this more. Time flown is more important than fuel gauges. Even though we have time gauges - the tach meter, hobbs meter, and a panel clock (which is required for IFR), the problem is that none of them warn you when your time is up. A kitchen timer is not going to be loud enough to hear. An aural warning device that plugs into your intercom would be a useful device worth selling (may be it exists already).
 
sarangan said:
An aural warning device that plugs into your intercom would be a useful device worth selling (may be it exists already).
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Your cellphone alarm, patched into the intercom via a jumper from the earphone jack to the intercom, maybe? Or is my smartphone the last phone with an earphone jack? I had heard that Apple had eliminated them for wireless earbuds or something.

Time is important, but the cruise charts in the POH or AFM are predicated on proper leaning in accordance with such instructions elsewhere in the POH. We discussed that in another thread this week. People who fly around at full rich can't expect those range and time numbers.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Your cellphone alarm, patched into the intercom via a jumper from the earphone jack to the intercom, maybe? Or is my smartphone the last phone with an earphone jack? I had heard that Apple had eliminated them for wireless earbuds or something.

Time is important, but the cruise charts in the POH or AFM are predicated on proper leaning in accordance with such instructions elsewhere in the POH. We discussed that in another thread this week. People who fly around at full rich can't expect those range and time numbers.
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Time should be your primary way of monitoring (adjusted by your own logging of past fuel burn), and the fuel gauges, secondary. You need to trust the least optimistic of the two, of course, because you could always have a slow leak in the fuel system (I did once) or something else unexpected that a timer won't catch.

In a low wing, without a "both" selector, you always have a third warning layer — if you run a tank dry when it's supposed to have lots of fuel left, you know something's seriously wrong, so you can switch to the other tank and use it to get you to the nearest airport for a precautionary landing. If you have a high wing and fly on "Both," then when you're dry, you're really dry.
 
Half Fast said:
An FAA approved device for generating false confidence and inspiring hope and unwarranted courage in the gullible.
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Correct.. Known fuel quantity divided by fuel burn is how long you fly. 3rd grade math....:rolleyes:
 
My plane is old enough that it doesn't have gauges in the panel. They are in the wing root. A cork on the end of an arm. When they stop bouncing around is when you better have a plan!
 
what if you have a fuel leak?
 
Salty said:
what if you have a fuel leak?
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Gauges better be working as required. Just leaving a fuel cap off can lose huge amounts of fuel in a hurry.

But in a bladder-type tank, such a fail can also suck the bladder itself upward toward the open filler or badly leaking cap, and it will hold the sender float up and show a full tank. Cessna has an SB on that one.
 
Salty said:
what if you have a fuel leak?
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I agree — I'd never trust my fuel gauge if it said I had more fuel than my watch says, but it will get my attention if it says I have a lot less (especially if I know how it usually reads).
 
In regards to mistakenly mixing up controls how about the 1947 Bonanza where every switch was identical including flaps and gear. We have the hindsight nowadays to know exactly what's gonna happen here eventually.

1510613732.JPG


In regards to fuel gauges, even if it's not 100% accurate it at least should have the ability to cause you to ask yourself "why is it doing that?" when something is wrong.
 
Columbo was flying in a Bonanza in the latest rerun tonight ... N7835R

The female pilot (Leslie Williams) was doing aerobatics with him in the plane. Maybe the FAA might wanna ask them about that! :happydance:
 
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