Lindbergh's fuel supply problem and solution

[Lutherman]

I read that Charles Lindbergh had a fuel supply emergency on his famous flight, which he had to troubleshoot and invent a solution for. That's all I know, can anyone provide details or where I can look for information?

Thanks,
Luther

[Groundloop]

By "fuel emergency" do you mean when his engine cut-out because he had run the tank feeding it dry! Switched to another tank and all was well. Not a difficult solution!

Best place to look would be his book "The Spirit of St Louis".

[aviate1138]

If you look at the pipework for the tanks and valves!

No wonder he made one mistake!

http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn77/aviate1138/Picture8-5.jpg

[Herod]

aviate1138. Dead giveaway, the icons. Should have gone into the panel config. file and added // before each one. Removes them, and then it looks like the real thing! :ok:

[longer ron]

Spirit of St Louis by Charles Lindbergh is an extremely well written account of the flight.
An excellent read

[pasir]

Similar to Lindbergh The Rallye MS880 also had fuel tank switches that while posing little or no problems to regular users of the aircraft could and did present misundersandings over tank switching to some inexperienced PPLs - as proven when two barely qualified PPLs hired a Rallye from its owner at Biggin and went for an hours jolly around the Thames but suddenly had to pancake when the fan stopped turning. Their reason for the emergency landing ? Engine failure - Whereas the owner having
inspected and retrieved his plane was adamant that they had failed to
switch tanks when the one ran dry !

(Never had to worry about those problems on my 172J)

Brian ex G BCVI

[Double Zero]

Aviate,

Thanks for the excellent photo' of Spirit of St Louis's panel.

It looks like a plumber's nightmare ( and during a low period I used my aircraft / general engineering training to work on plumbing ! ) but I notice there are no lables on the fuel cocks.

This would be spiffing, as the aircraft was only built for one pilot, but for the fatigue factor.

I'm not surprised he had problems with tank selection en route...

[Jhieminga]

This is a photo of the real thing, the Flight Simulator screenshot posted above does look pretty similar.
http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/W/3/WEB10067-2003h.jpg

[function]

That 'skill' seemed to stay with him.....
"The famed aviator Charles Lindbergh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh) toured the South Pacific as a civilian contractor for United Aircraft Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Aircraft_and_Transport_Corporation), comparing and evaluating performance of single- and twin-engined fighters for Vought (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought). He worked to improve range and load limits of the F4U Corsair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F4U_Corsair), flying both routine and combat strafing missions in Corsairs alongside Marine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Aviation) pilots. In Hollandia, he attached himself to the 475th FG flying P-38s so that he could investigate the twin-engine fighter. Though new to the machine, he was instrumental in extending the range of the P-38 through improved throttle settings, or engine-leaning techniques, notably by reducing engine speed to 1,600 rpm, setting the carburetors for auto-lean and flying at 185 mph (298 km/h) indicated airspeed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicated_airspeed) which reduced fuel consumption to 70 gal/h, about 2.6 mpg"

P-38 Lightning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-38_Lightning)