From the very first lesson I teach my students to think about fuel as "time in your tanks". This of course starts with what the dipstick shows on the preflight. Lessons which are flown in the local area use a block fuel burn (ie a conservative average of what is typical for an average training sortie, which is usually about 20 % higher than the leaned cruise fuel flow in the POH), giving the time available in the air for that lesson. This time minus the reserve is the "we have to be on the ground no later than" time.
Navigation exercises are planned in the usual way but I insist that the student be able to tell me how long they can fly from the top of climb point. Have to go somewhere else from any point in the flight ? Well after you figure out how long it is going to take you you can ask yourself "do I have that time in the tanks".
I was very interested in this Big Pistons. Of course I would not dream of arguing with you because from other threads I see that you are vastly experienced and respected on this forum.
So this is really out of curiosity, nothing else. So ok, the student tells you how long they can fly from top of climb. THis I can do for my instructor by looking at fuel circles seeing we have say 57 litres for our trip and at that point we have enough in teh tank to RTB. It is there on my chart and all the brain work has been done before so I can just concentrate on flying. So I guess what i'm wondering is why form your viewpoint is asking the student to tell you this way when they are probably maxed out with flying, better than our way where my instructor can see from looking at his copy of my planned route, how much fuel I expect us to have?
If we are flying one of the Grobs, we don't use a dipstick, but just check the fuel gauge against the Tech log. However, if we are flying the Firefly we do indeed dip both tanks.
And on the subject of leaning....I am not taught how to, the mixture is ALWAYS rich!
