You've just reminded me of probably my most serious fup.....Once upon a time, long long ago (and I don't speak of it much
)...
I was being checked out on the syndicate aircraft, and arrived early at the airport to meet my instructor, a very nice bloke as it turned out, a Captain with a major airline and ex harrier pilot. We decided to head to kemble for some cheap circuits, rather than pay the £21 per pop at the home base. I did some pre-flight planning and estimated 30 minutes en-route, which was my first mistake. Fuel had been left on tabs by the previous pilot, and I guestimated 4 hours fuel (after a brief scan of the POH).
We took off, turned NW and then did some general handling, stalls steep turns etc, then headed on our way. Initially we were jerked around by Lyneham, who didn't clear us through their zone until we had detoured to avoid it. Arriving at Kemble we carried out a number of circuits, I thought that as this check-out was required by the syndicate, I'd make best use of it to brush up, so we did a whole load of different approaches, short field, soft field, glide etc etc. before we stopped for lunch. During lunch the instructor asked me what I wanted to do, and as I'd been flying IFR rather a lot, I suggested doing a bit of VFR nav to brush up. We decided on a jolly around Devon and Cornwall, before returning to base, basically a bit of fun. I knocked up a quick PLOG, based upon a route taking us south of Bristol, then west towards Bude, before heading south, intercepting the coast and flying back home via Plymouth and Exeter's overheads. We had plenty of fuel, at least 3½ hrs left, and my route should take around 2 hours.....plenty. Mistake number 2. Looking back through my logbook, it actually took us 1hr and 48 minutes to get to kemble, with our training........We now had actually 2hrs 12 minutes of fuel NOT 3½ HRS..............................
We took off, headed SW, past the huge antenna at Frome. Intercepted the M5 and followed it south. The weather was deteriorating, the cloudbase was lowering all the time. Just to the west of Dunkeswell, we turned west across dartmoor, I wasn't particularly concerned by the weather I hold an instrument rating, my instructor was used to low level nav at 400kts, so we were fine....we continued.
A little later on, now deep into Dartmoor was when I started to get concerned. We were now < 900', with terrain up to 500' below us, a dangerous situation. We decided to abort and turn south. This is when I started to get seriously worried. We were flying down a valley towards Tavistock at 900', the chart showed elevations up to 1092' in the close proximity, but worse of all there were some antennas sort of straight in front of us, up to 1995', which we couldn't see. We still had forward visibility below the cloud so we stayed VFR, trying not to break any rules of the air (luckily dartmoor is fairly sparsley populated). Anyway, we made it through the valley, and found the coast and headed East, crossing plymouth hoe at....ahem....less than 1000'. Once past Plymouth, I made the executive decision to stop fooling around, and climbed to FL45 or something and became IFR, I immediately felt happier, knowing that we were not going to plow into any cumulo-granitus. We were receiving a Radar service from Plymouth who handed us off to Exeter, then Plymouth Mil, who were nice enough to inform us that many of the Danger areas on our route of flight were inactive. Things were progressing well...the fuel guages didn't show anything out of the ordinary, we still had plenty of fuel onboard, it was fun. We had now been airbourne for 1hr 40 minutes.......
Plymouth Mil handed us off to Bournemouth, and we requested and were given vectors for the ILS, we'd made it, nothing was going to stop us getting back now..........Until another aircraft had a problem, a jet with a presurization problem it turned out. The controller immediately vectored us off the ILS and out over the Isle of Wight, she was getting in quite a state, vectoring us all over the place, we spent 30 minutes sight seeing (by this time the weather had cleared a bit) over Dorset and Hampshire......I did notice the instructor getting a bit twitchy, asking for vectors back to the ILS every few minutes, my Freda checks showed at least 10 gals of fuel onboard........
Finally, given vectors to the ILS, intercept the localizer, glide slope coming in.....and the engine started to cough and splutter. I'll give him his due, they obviously teach these military pilots to remain calm in all situations. He turned to me and said "I think you should change tanks", which I was already doing. With that the engine recovered, and we made a normal landing. Taxyed to parking, and the instructor left me to clear up the plane as he had another appointment which he was late for.
I totaled up the time, and it appeared to have been 2 hrs 42 minutes since leaving Kemble. The shock came when I added in the flight TO kemble.....total flying time 4hrs 30 minutes......
A quick check of the fuel tanks revealed NO VISIBLE FUEL, even the fuel guy commented on it, it took 170 litres to fill up to tabs.
Checking back through the POH, useable fuel to tabs is 50 USG, or 190l, so in all probability we had a good 5USG usable remaining (not a lot when you burn 10gals/hr at 55%!) . Still, I learned some very important lessons that day:-
1) Don't f**k around with fuel. Take on fuel anywhere you can
2) Forget marginal VFR, it is highly dangerous
3) Do the calculations properly! Not just "rules of thumb"
Since this flight, I made another flight in the US. Flight time was 1.8hrs, and I considered NOT taking on fuel so I could save a few pennies by filling up when we got back at the FBOs standard rate. I remembered this story and filled up, good job too, as the flight back was over 2½ hrs, due to IFR routings.....
Safe flying
EA