The topic of fuel has a reasonable amount of ground school time allocated
to it, because it’s kind of important. We are taught to check for water in the
fuel (bad thing), metal bits in the fuel (also bad) and finally the colour of
the fuel.
Again this isn’t a fashion item, different grades of fuel are dyed
different colours, so it is relatively easy to tell if the stuff that is in your
tanks is going to make the engine purr sweetly or blow up in your face.
The Cessna 172s I fly use 100LL grade fuel, which is dyed blue. At
a pinch they’ll also just use standard 100 fuel as well (LL stands for low lead)
which is dyed green.
Anything red in the tank is bad as is anything clear
or straw coloured.
There are things about fuel that they don’t tell you in ground
school though, like the fact that if you get it in your eye that it can
dissolve your contact lenses.
They also don’t cover the important topic of pilot fuel. Pilots run on two types of fuel, Brunch and
Butter tarts. Sometimes both at the same time.
For the former it is well know that no matter what time of day they
land, most pilots will, when given the chance, order brunch. I’ve been at flyouts where the kitchen has had to send out for extra eggs.
Airport destinations are
not picked for their runway lengths, configurations or conditions but for the quality
of the restaurants. Any change in ownership is investigated and reported on at
length. If you run a restaurant at an airport
then you pretty much have to consider every customer as a potential “mystery
shopper”, they WILL be filing a report.
As for the butter tarts, these are essential. The best location for
the purchasing of said baked goods is usually a hotly contested topic.
They are used to top up blood sugar levels (often to near diabetic coma
inducing levels), bribe dispatch, make peace with mechanics and a thousand
other things.
Either way pilots simply don’t function without them.
Ok, I didn’t actually start writing this post with food in mind. I
actually meant to talk about my first foray into refuelling an aircraft or at
least helping S
Guess that’ll be another post then!
