Fuel draining is a drag when you're alone

[Zach Grant L1011jock]

Effie,
Get some tamper evidentseals, and seal your fuel doors after fill up. See if the problem persists...
-Zach

[ics-12766]

Effie, you and your fellow owners can get together and buy a motion sensing camera with invisible IR flash. Solve the mystery once and for all

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/commo ... jsp.form23

[Effie Andree Wiltens]

Zach,
I had a look at the labels. It's an interesting idea, but only workable when we don't open the seal ourselves to inspect the tank. Fuel isn't necessarily disappearing at the first opportunity.
Maybe we'll go for the hair-across-the-surface spy trick.
For now, I've put a notepaper inside the door on top of the filler caps : THEFT IS ILLEGAL AND WILL BE PUNISHED. And we've an agreement among ourselves to always position the caps in such-and-such a way. Meanwhile we're dipstick checking when we put the plane to bed and again before the next flight. The record wil show, or not.

There's an item in the Tips manual about installing locks. That's useful anyway when you're visiting places with bad airfield security. We weren't expecting this sort of thing on our home turf, however!

As for the camera, there's a lot of legitimate movement in the hangar. The plane also gets moved around to get other planes in and out, making it difficult to aim the camera's line of sight. Mounting on the aircraft itself creates its own logistical nightmare.

The best we can do for now is to keep a good record of our dipstick measurements.

[Effie Andree Wiltens]

I had another look at the seals option. They do offer a solution that is workable and it's not too expensive. Except that the shipping multiplies the cost by a factor of 4, adding a ridiculous $60-80 to an order of $25. Unfortunately, I'm not planning to be in the USA in the foreseeable future.

[howard]

tip tanks can drain into mains in a big way!.
aux can also move to mains.
I have had fuel pouring all over the place on a tip tank equipped single. I had to turn the selectors off.
a hill on the ramp, along with a passing selector will make it even more fun.
I sure hope noone is stealing it , mind you I also hope your selectors are not passing!!
Howard

[Effie Andree Wiltens]

Being new to the Comanche, I'm still in the gathering data phase. Nothing gets discounted, nothing assumed. I've heard that there can be flow through the spider/selector arrangement. We don't mind flow so much as long as fuel doesn't get lost. The main gauges are totally unreliable as indicators.
We dipstick measure all tanks before each flight and tote everything up, and compare that total with the previous post-flight total. People have observed us doing this, it might even serve as a deterrant to know that we keep careful watch.
There's an item in the Tips about locks on the doors, but the pictures are not clear. I'd hate to regret a messy job, this has to be done right or not at all.

[Jay]