Misfueled Aerostar

hindsight2020 said:
It really should go without saying, but manipulating the fueling mechanics to accommodate a clearly incompatible nozzle to the filler port in use, ought to be an immediate non-starter.
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You would think so, but I have personal experience with the contrary. Many years ago I went out to preflight a club archer and the cabin smelled of Jet A. After sumping, the sample smelled strongly of Jet A and there was a barely perceptible (if any) blue color. Long story short after the club manager put the FBO through the wringer it was found that the last pilot that flew the aircraft, a student pilot on a x-country, had topped the aircraft with Jet A at one of his stops. He found it strange that the nozzle wouldn't fit, but elected to slowly dribble several gallons of Jet A into the tanks. This student pilot was a physician, so go figure. Anyway he flew 120 miles with a mixture of 100LL and Jet A. The really amazing part is that there was no apparent damage to the engine. To this day I always smell my sump samples...
 
Tantalum said:
I'm assuming the fuel filler ports will specifically say on there what it requires though, no? So while they look similar, even a half attentive person should be able to what the fuel fill port says
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The Diamonds have locking gas gaps and whenever I took the DA40NG out, nobody but me touches the key.

Attached is the placard next to it, though.
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honestly this whole thing to me is like somebody dying from drinking a bottle of Windex strictly because it is the same color as Gatorade
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Millenials and Tide pods.
 
FBO personnel, generally speaking are minimum wage, lowly educated workers. It used to be that aspiring pilots/mechanics pumped gas at the FBO(like me) but now I see a lot of people off the streets, at least in metro areas. If you go to a mainly jet servicing FBO, you MUST explain to EVERYBODY(desk employee, fueler) the type of fuel. And even then, I get the “negative prist?” Question every time. More than once I’ve had them misplace the 100LL truck and I had to fly to another airfield for gas. Recently I was at an FBO and caught a line tech on his first week. I said I needed top off, and he just COULD NOT wrap his head around that. He filled to the bottom of the neck, TWICE, after I said “no, i want in sloshing out of the top”(my flying is long x country). I had to literally show him what I wanted(and taught him an old school trick or two).

In the course of my job I sometimes do presentations to FBOs on “best practices”. Showing them the damage/ramp rash/hangar rash claims I see every day and put a dollar value to the damage they can do(towing jets into walls/planes/ cars). Their eyes gloss over, some throw on shades and fall asleep. Never overestimate line techs. Some are good, most are not. Especially at larger airfields with many FBOs. The good ones get trained and mover elsewhere for a dollar more per hour.
 
To make matters worse, this particular airport/FBO is owned by the City of Kokomo, and the employees are city workers. These guys typically couldn't tell the difference between an airplane and a helicopter, let alone a piston vs turbine.
And this particular line guy might be too dumb to realize that the Jet A nozzle shouldn't go in a 100LL filler neck, but he was smart enough to say the pilot repeatedly told him to fill with Jet A. So, he's got that going for him.
 
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Line boy for training ratio, back in the '50s.

One summer day, daylight to dark, of beyond, equaled one hour in a well worn Piper J3 Cub, fit in when there was an instructor with no student scheduled, and no hope of one showing up. You may go for a week to get any of your flying, and it may be on a day with a light drizzle, but just legal visibility.

A week of line boy paid for an hour in the Cessna with a radio, but the same restrictions on when you could actually fly.

Line boy included washing planes for the school and tie down customers, the school got the payment for the customer wash, you got the tips for superior work. Helping in the hanger was not generally expected.

Helping in the hanger was better compensated, but still, no money changed hands. A day paid for an hour in a complex aircraft, and one of the better instructors, such as a CFII. You were also learning the mechanics of airplanes, potentially very valuable knowledge.

When your skills in the hanger reached the point that you could do proper oil changes and spark plug replacement, unsupervised, you were valuable enough to get an hour in the Beech 18 per day. It was a well worn military surplus trainer, but the log book entries were solid gold.

The instructors were not paid for this either, it was just log book hours toward their future careers, instead of sitting on the couch waiting in case a new student walked in.

In those days, there were a lot of man hours at a small airport that never caused any money to change hands, the kids who did it were living at home, and likely rode their bikes to work. One of my high school class mates went that route, and ended up as a test pilot at Boeing.
 
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In these misfueling situations, how does it take so long for the bad fuel to kill the engine(s)?

You've got start up, taxi, run up... And especially the latter should be moving rather significant volumes of fuel from the tank to the engine. How does the engine keep running through all that, and even a takeoff roll, then die a few hundred off the ground from the bad fuel? There can't really be that much fuel in the plumbing between tanks to engines that you never touch the new "bad" fuel until then can there?
 
Todd82 said:
In these misfueling situations, how does it take so long for the bad fuel to kill the engine(s)?

You've got start up, taxi, run up... And especially the latter should be moving rather significant volumes of fuel from the tank to the engine. How does the engine keep running through all that, and even a takeoff roll, then die a few hundred off the ground from the bad fuel? There can't really be that much fuel in the plumbing between tanks to engines that you never touch the new "bad" fuel until then can there?
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Give it a try sometime, turn your fuel shutoff to off before start up and see how far you get. Rumor has it you have just enough to get off the ground.
 
Tantalum said:
I'm assuming the fuel filler ports will specifically say on there what it requires though, no? So while they look similar, even a half attentive person should be able to what the fuel fill port says
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My friend recently changed his car. He went from a diesel Grand Cherokee to a gasoline Durango. He ended up forcing(does one need to in the car?) a diesel nozzle into his Durango and filling it with diesel within less than a month of owning it. Habit is a powerful thing. How many people see diesel 172s in USA often?
 
genna said:
My friend recently changed his car. He went from a diesel Grand Cherokee to a gasoline Durango. He ended up forcing(does one need to in the car?) a diesel nozzle into his Durango and filling it with diesel within less than a month of owning it. Habit is a powerful thing. How many people see diesel 172s in USA often?
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Have a neighbor who drives an F350 Powerstroke do that to his wife's Audi A8 when he borrowed it.
By the time the Audi dealer got finished with him it might have been cheaper to buy her a new car...
 
genna said:
My friend recently changed his car. He went from a diesel Grand Cherokee to a gasoline Durango. He ended up forcing(does one need to in the car?) a diesel nozzle into his Durango and filling it with diesel within less than a month of owning it. Habit is a powerful thing. How many people see diesel 172s in USA often?
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Sure, but "forcing" is the operative word there
 
Tantalum said:
Sure, but "forcing" is the operative word there
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I’m not really familiar with diesel nozzles. He told me they are different, but he doesn’t remember if he had to force it. So I’m not sure. My point was that one can do this to own vehicle by habit.
 
genna said:
My friend recently changed his car. He went from a diesel Grand Cherokee to a gasoline Durango. He ended up forcing(does one need to in the car?) a diesel nozzle into his Durango and filling it with diesel within less than a month of owning it. Habit is a powerful thing. How many people see diesel 172s in USA often?
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I had a diesel vw Passat. Loved it. Had to give it back due to their issues. Traded for same exact model and color in gas. Caught myself more then once pulling up to the wrong station... never got the wrong pump in hand. Took several weeks to get out of that habit.
 
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