[geeks] Mac definitions

[erie patsellis]

On 7/16/2011 3:01 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On 07/16/11 15:36, erie patsellis wrote:
>> Yea, I've seen that too often with lots of newly minted PPL's, and the sad part is in the
>> R172K I flew in, spinning was fun, recovery fairly simple and altitude loss minimal. Even
>> worse, I have seen quite a few pilots that transitioned from a C152/172 to a Cherokee or
>> (god forbid) an Arrow and run one tank dry, land dead stick, and then realize why...
>
> So what's the story on tankage on the Arrow and Cherokee?  I might need
> to know some day.

Tank selector (from memory, always an iffy proposition) rotates from left, both, right, 
off. Unless we had a lot of shrimp in coolers on the plane (few times a year we used to 
make a run or two to the gulf..) I made it a habit to fly with both until down to about 
1/2 or so, then alternate every 30 mins to keep the weight equalized. What I do remember 
is that it's really easy to inadvertently switch to off, a visual confirmation is the best 
approach.

Some pilots forget to remember the "every 30 mins" (and if they were coming from a high 
wing plane forget to turn on the boost pump when switching tanks, climbing out, landing, 
), don't give much thought to it. (IIRC, Cessna 152/172's have a crossover tube to help 
keep the levels somewhat even, in theory. Been several years since I dug into one.)

The other thing is to remember to periodically fly the plane at full gross (within the c/g 
specs), it flies like a totally different aircraft at full gross and getting used to that 
feeling (and periodically updating that feeling) is a good idea.

Because we flew different makes and models, I made up laminated flip card checklists for 
each procedure for each aircraft, lapboard sized and I had at least one in each aircraft, 
kept one in each of my flight bags and kept a few of each hanging around the hanger.