Sunday, May 17, 2009

So it begins

KRHV 172047Z 28010KT 15SM SKC 38/10 A2987


To say it was hot to day at the airport would be a massive understatement. It was the kind of hot that causes public acts of nudity to be deemed acceptable. It was the kind of hot that even kept the most hardcore of 75 year old hangar flyers at home in their Los Gatos palaces. It was so hot, that the takeoff performance of 3 loaded Cessna 152s was deemed too efficient. Thankfully the truck has the magic of wing windows, which take hot, still air, and turn it into hot, moving air.

Science!

Sometimes I feel like I'm sending people off to their death when I indulge their stupid requests. It's 100˚, you have two decent sized guys AND you want full tanks for your pattern work? I'll just go ahead and have the fire department on speakerphone for you. Yeah yeah, we can have a lengthy discussion about the importance of fuel (Thats like, your opinion, man), but if you're planning on flying for 1 hour on a perfect VFR day, I think its less safe to be overweight and out of balance than to have only 1 hour reserve when you get back.

Well, if someone crashes because of extra fuel, I'll at least get to claim another kill for the fuel truck.

That brings me to the first and second laws of fueling:

1: The only aircraft that isn't topped off will be the first one to go flying.
2: If all the aircraft are full, then someone will need a 152 topped off for patternwork.

We'd keep the 152s topped, but they just leak gas everywhere once they're full. We were putting cans to catch the drips, but then the genius smokers at the airport started flicking cigarette butts into them. Brilliant.

1 comment:

  1. Do you ever wonder how these people got their ratings and how you worked so hard to get yours?

    ReplyDelete