Fuel Senders - New Production

[Scott Philiben]

We are interested in the Comanche and Twin Comanche market. We are the largest supplier of aircraft fuel quantity senders in aviation. We understand your not knowing who we are - it was a silent coup de etas. Some of you are familiar with my work - I was responsible for Speedbrakes on the Comanche at my former business. I branched off into this new area and we supply fuel quantity to Cirrus, Textron, Vulcanair, Quest, Tecnam, Stemme ....

It is a plug and play replacement physically and needs a power wire to operate - so not quite so easy electrically. The sensors are intelligent so they require power to operate.

We have 15,000 senders in the field (yes a silent Coup de etas) and no (zero zip NADA) unscheduled removals.

CiES Inc

Let us know if you are interested

[William Hughes]

Speaking for myself, it would be nice to have an "accurate" fuel gauge.

While I can understand that better technology could more accurately measure the distance from the probe to the surface of the fuel, you still end up with the issue of only being calibrated while in straight and wings-level flight. There is also, arguably, the more difficult problems imposed by the potentially variable geometry of the fuel bladders.

The requirement to run power to the sender is not necessarily a show stopper as there is a conductor there anyway, and thus there must be way to route it.

Given the untrustworthiness of the underlying manner in which the fuel tanks function this would be very low down the list of things that I would change on my aircraft, well after (1) RNAV capability, (2) an autopilot, (3) electronic ignition, and (4) a standard layout panel. And I'll be saving for decades to be able to afford that four item list...

[Scott Philiben]

Yes - without a major redesign - Straight and level was what was intended in the original design.

So with intelligence in the sender, linearizing the tank is child's play, so that isn't an issue.

That's what we are about fixing - the untrustworthiness

Understood on the financial part -

[Kristin Winter]

The gauges in Comanche respond resistance that runs from 0 to 30 ohms. Will your senders drive those old analog gauges or do we need a new display? It seems to me that we would need a field approval to install them, unless you have an STC.

There is another bunch of Comanche drivers over on the Airworthy Comanche Forum on Delphi if you want to ping that group. No cost to join.

[Scott Philiben]

The senders can drive analog gauges

Caveat - Good Analog gauges - worn or erratic gauges are similarly untrustworthy

For example those people moving to Digital engine displays complain about the fuel senders because they now can see how bad they are

The opposite is true as well - Good senders will produce untrustworthy indications in the cockpit.

The analog senders seemed to go mutually untrustworthy with the analog displays in the cockpit - symbiotic relationship - maybe it was designed that way

FAA TSO'd and by OSH STC'd

[William Hughes]

That is a great advert, btw.

[Tomoharu Nishino]

About a year ago, I had all four senders pulled from my tanks to have them rebuilt. All four were giving erroneous readings to various degrees. One failed again immediately after they came back from rebuild and had to be sent out again. They seemed to be doing fine, but on a recent flight I noticed that the senders on one of the tanks seems to be acting up again. (Now one tank the fuel level seems to be pegged at full.)

Right now, I don't rely on the fuel gauges so much, instead using a totalizer -- but a totalizer wouldn't detect fuel leaks. And the legality of inaccurate fuel senders (especially when the tank is empty) is a problem.

So if a new sender is priced right, and would save me the trouble, expense and downtime of pulling the senders periodically, then I would be very interested.

[Olivier Combret]