Here’s one of the questions they ask in their survey. Interesting things to ponder. I won’t be sending it in. Here, I’ll go first. Answer the poll yourself if you like. I’ll be posting another one every few days or so:
This is an eBook short story about a teenaged pilot’s harrowing experience flying a small airplane as a swordfish spotter over shark-infested waters off the La Jolla, San Diego, CA coast in the 1970’s.
Here is the Sixteenth installment, with a few paragraphs to follow about every few days…
CHAPTER 7 – JUST ONE MORE FISH
Well, this is screwed. I’ve been out here all day and gotten just one fish. If it isn’t me, it’s the boat, the fish, or whatever. But a guy can’t make a living with this kinda crap. Let’s see, turn on the fuel pump, and that will give me the last of the auxiliary fuel, then I have about two hours plus or minus left. Hmm. A hundred miles out, with a tailwind, a hundred miles per hour, that’s about an hour to shore. Then, fifteen minutes to the airport and that would leave me with about a half hour reserve. And, I have a Mae West life vest and an inflatable raft if I screw this up. Like I was going to screw this up or something. Shit, I’ve been flying this plane for about a month now.
About an hour went by and I hadn’t seen a fish, nor barely a shark, or a whale, or a sunfish for christsake! The place just dried up. Barren as a desert. But you never know. You just can’t give up five minutes before the miracle. Any moment, and there it could be. Rent money! And, I couldn’t depend on the roommate I lived with.
OK, so I had better head home now because my reserve has dwindled to about thirty minutes. And if I am off, I could have a tough time assuring my destination. OK, in ten minutes, I’ll head back. That’s it.
… read the whole story to date here
This is an eBook short story about a teenaged pilot’s harrowing experience flying a small airplane as a swordfish spotter over shark-infested waters off the La Jolla, San Diego, CA coast in the 1970’s.
Here is the fifteenth installment, with a few paragraphs to follow about every few days…
So, these fish spotter planes have extra tanks, to stay out for eight to ten hours non stop. You need enough fuel for an hour or two each way to the boat and back, plus reserve. Plus, you need to catch fish. That can take some time. The farther away the boat is from the airport, the less fuel is available to make money. Farther out, less profit. Closer in, more profit.
This one had an extra tank strapped down where the back seat had been removed. There were about forty gallons in there. This gas and the main tanks would give me about six to eight hours in the air total. There was no way for the engine to get the fuel except by gravity. The wing tanks are above the engine in these planes. Gravity makes the fuel flow down into the engine with no help from a pump. So, how do you get fuel from the auxiliary tank to the engine? Pump it into the wing tanks. If you wait too long and find out the pump doesn’t work, you could be left with not enough fuel in the wing tanks to get back home. Wouldn’t that be the shits? To run out of gas, crash and burn in a fire from the fuel tank ramming into the back of your head when you hit the ground.
There are many aspects to Fuel Management and this is an important one. When there is enough available space in the wing tanks to accept fuel and not spill it overboard, start the pump. Do this with enough fuel in the wings to get home if the pump doesn’t work. So, I flip the fuel pump switch, and twenty minutes later, the wing tanks are… full. Good job.
… read the whole story to date here