Originally Posted by
zegnaangelo
The piper seems unintuitive. Off left right.
I fly the grob.it has the tank selector in the middle with Left Off Right.
more intuitive. Horses for courses.
i prefer Cessnas both tanks.
never has big urge to fly a piper.
OFF-LEFT-RIGHT makes sense when "OFF" is not a typical setting, so 99% of times you are just switching between "LEFT" and "RIGHT". You would only select "OFF" on the ground for maintenance functions in reality. Why have a setting that could end up starving the engine of fuel as a regular, 'move through' option.
With that sort of thinking magnetos would be LEFT-OFF-RIGHT-BOTH or something like that.
In any case the Grob 115 at least is a good example of bad design. I personally know of one that has turned the fuel off and crashed as a result, thankfully they are built like F1 cars and the occupants survived with only a scratch. The fuel selectors being between the pilots but slightly behind so out of normal visual arcs.
Reminds me of the Seneca I & II having the Left mags, Landing lights and Fuel pumps all on top of each other so if you don't visually check what you are switching, you might just give yourself an engine failure while switching off the landing lights. Which is probably the cause of the Seneca accident in NW WA a while back, unfortunately that didn't end well for the pilot.