Swift UL94

"because that does not help the plane which has been heat soaked sitting in the sun, and is no climbing in altitude...."

But where does it simply spec or even allow that wings & ground-based fuel tanks be painted white, rather than red?
 
nrpetersen said:
"because that does not help the plane which has been heat soaked sitting in the sun, and is no climbing in altitude...."

But where does it simply spec or even allow that wings & ground-based fuel tanks be painted white, rather than red?
Click to expand...

Ok, my knowledge here is from watching a few webcasts and reading online. So....
FAA takes worst case scenario's. Paint color is largely ignored. They assume a peak fuel temp that was super high, something like 130 degrees and then climb to low flight levels, something like 22K. The temp and altitude were set a long time ago as part of flight testing some commercial airliner; think before jets. And the thinking goes, many aircraft and engines now depend on meeting that performance. So even though it may not apply to 99% of the fleet or the GA flying public, they cannot make the change unilaterally. Further, the estimate is 20% of the fleet consumes 80% of the fuel, and these are the highly stressed engines that fly more and fly high.

Tim
 
nrpetersen said:
"because that does not help the plane which has been heat soaked sitting in the sun, and is no climbing in altitude...."

But where does it simply spec or even allow that wings & ground-based fuel tanks be painted white, rather than red?
Click to expand...
I’ve never seen a regulatory spec on fuel tank color. I have participated in fuel tank color discussions. I think the navy/marines used some dark colors on some gas burners. The army used olive drab fer sure. Most sane folks know or learn quickly that dark colors on gas tanks is a bad idea. Oil companies know it fer sure (mostly). The BLM does not know it and refuses to learn. The BLM has specs for tank colors so I suppose that could be called a spec for a gas tank with just a little bit of stretching.
 
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