Fuel gauge

cowman

cowman

Final Approach
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The 172 I used to rent had this nice tube with lines on it you could dip into the fuel tank, put your finger over it and pull it out and you'd see exactly how much gas was in the tank.

I'd love to have one of those for my Archer, but the only ones I'm seeing are for Cessnas or are the universal one you have to calibrate.. whatever that involves.

Does anyone make one for a pa-28-181? I guess I can get the universal one but it would be nice to get one specific to my airplane.
 
cowman said:
The 172 I used to rent had this nice tube with lines on it you could dip into the fuel tank, put your finger over it and pull it out and you'd see exactly how much gas was in the tank.

I'd love to have one of those for my Archer, but the only ones I'm seeing are for Cessnas or are the universal one you have to calibrate.. whatever that involves.

Does anyone make one for a pa-28-181? I guess I can get the universal one but it would be nice to get one specific to my airplane.
Click to expand...


I have a universal for the C177 and I don't like having to hunt for the calibration card. This card comes with the dipskick and you plot out the reading on the stick as you add fuel to an empty tank, on a graph.

To elimate the need to find the card floating in the airplane, to convert stick reading to gallons, I'm thinking of having that calibration graph printed on vinyl decals and placing them at each fuel filler. So all I have to do is dip it, read the stick and look at the "dipstick calibration decal" placard.


To get to "legal empty", I'd fly one tank empty, then drain whatever gas comes out of that tank's sump drain, then add the amount of unusable fuel specified in the POH compared to the type certificate data sheet (note any fuel tank STC's which would likely invalidate that data) back into the tank before stating the calibration procedure of adding a gallon or 2 at a time and dipping the tank to record what the stick reads. Make sure the airplane is fairly level too.
 
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TAP Plastics, an 18" piece of 1/4" rigid plastic tubing, and a permanent black marking pen. PERMANENT.

Empty a tank. Put in a gallon. Put in the tube, hold finger. Draw out fuel. Mark the one gallon point with the Sharpie pen. Two gallons. Three.

Want to make it go twice as fast? Two gallons at a time and interpolate.

Five at a time and interpolate. No chart necessary.

.
.
 
weirdjim said:
TAP Plastics, an 18" piece of 1/4" rigid plastic tubing, and a permanent black marking pen. PERMANENT.

Empty a tank. Put in a gallon. Put in the tube, hold finger. Draw out fuel. Mark the one gallon point with the Sharpie pen. Two gallons. Three.

Want to make it go twice as fast? Two gallons at a time and interpolate.

Five at a time and interpolate. No chart necessary.

.
.
Click to expand...


There is one scenario where the chart makes sense, if there are more than one tank in each wing. Then you could use one universal stick but different calibration charts for different tanks.
 
Actually if you follow Jim's procedure, make sure you count how much fuel the FULL up reads on your guage. You may be counting unusable.

Also very important with the flat fuel tanks in airplane wings. Make sure the aircraft is level.
 
flyingron said:
Actually if you follow Jim's procedure, make sure you count how much fuel the FULL up reads on your guage. You may be counting unusable.

Also very important with the flat fuel tanks in airplane wings. Make sure the aircraft is level.
Click to expand...


I flew one tank dry on the 177 and pumped 25.4 gallons into a 24 useable tank... The monarch raised caps may have contributed.
 
I don't know the details on the 177, but on the 172, there's two gallons on each side difference between bone dry and usable fuel. Now the question is how empty did you really get it? One you calibrate your fuel stick up to the brim, count down from the top to figure out where the usable fuel ends.

I've got just a stick (looks like a piece of redwood) that I dip the Navion tanks with (some previous owner made it and I got it with the plane). Frankly, I don't tend to use it. If I can see fuel in the main tank filler I've got half tanks. If it's less than that, I'm not launching (unless it's to an airport only a few minutes away to top off).
 
All I need to do is read the gauge.
 
Geico266 said:
A fuel gage in an airplane is about as useful as Henning in a convent. Sometimes it works, some times it dones't. ;)
Click to expand...

So true: The only time one can be sure of the fuel onboard is when the tank is full to the brim, or the engine just quit from fuel exhaustion...still, that's all we have on the 737.
 
bnt83 said:
I have a universal for the C177 and I don't like having to hunt for the calibration card. This card comes with the dipskick and you plot out the reading on the stick as you add fuel to an empty tank, on a graph.

To elimate the need to find the card floating in the airplane, to convert stick reading to gallons, I'm thinking of having that calibration graph printed on vinyl decals and placing them at each fuel filler. So all I have to do is dip it, read the stick and look at the "dipstick calibration decal" placard.


To get to "legal empty", I'd fly one tank empty, then drain whatever gas comes out of that tank's sump drain, then add the amount of unusable fuel specified in the POH compared to the type certificate data sheet (note any fuel tank STC's which would likely invalidate that data) back into the tank before stating the calibration procedure of adding a gallon or 2 at a time and dipping the tank to record what the stick reads. Make sure the airplane is fairly level too.
Click to expand...

I can print you the decals www.signspeeweedesigns.com
 
Decals and sharpie pens suck, they all fade out after some use.

I have a 14" mahogony dowel from the hardware store that about 3/4ish wide, emptied a tank via the sump, added 2 gal and made a mark, repeated all the way to full.

Took a small manual screw and spin type pipe cutter and made a grooved ring around each mark, then I took a dremel with the tiny engraving bit and labeled each ring.

Total cost was about 2 bucks and some of my time, I KNOW it's 100% accurate, also it's too big to acidently drop in the tank and if I somehow managed to loose it in the tank it floats.

On the ground the best and final mesure of fuel is a fuel stick

In the air it's time

Everything else is just a secondary confirmation IMO.
 
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Geico266 said:
A fuel gage in an airplane is about as useful as Henning in a convent. Sometimes it works, some times it dones't. ;)
Click to expand...

not the float driven Cessna gauges in the wing butt, they are always correct. (no Electricity required) or the fuel tube found in the wing but of the Piper super cub, all you see is a colored bead floating in the fuel in the tube. Or the J3 with the little wire sticking out the fuel filler cap.

Not all fuel gauges are faulty.
 
j1b3h0 said:
So true: The only time one can be sure of the fuel onboard is when the tank is full to the brim, or the engine just quit from fuel exhaustion...still, that's all we have on the 737.
Click to expand...

But your fuel is verified. Fuel remaining plus fuel added must be within a tolerance. If not the plane can be defueled and refueled with a known amount. Or verified with the drip sticks.
 
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