The thought of having fuel in the tanks but no way to get to it bothers me. In other threads we talked about tank vents getting clogged, iced, or put on incorrectly, making fuel in that tank unavailable. A pretty significant single point of failure to be able to inop a whole tank of fuel from a single 1/8" hole, seems to me. I was thinking I'd design and fab a custom check valve and maybe terminate the vent line in an empty wing bay with a weep hole, but that solution is sub-optimal for all the obvious reason.
My latest idea is to have a vent line run from the outbd of the tank near the filler neck to a ball valve on the wing root. If I suspect a vent has been clogged or put on backward I can open the ALT vent valve and vent from the cabin. No exposure to the outside, no cross vent, can be easily checked/drained, a completely redundant tank vent. 1/4" lines and fittings would be extra weight sure, but not that bad for the functionality. Plus I'd now have a cabin-side fitting to plumb a ferry tank if I ever needed.
Question is do I do this to the aux tanks too? I don't think I want to connect the aux and main tanks via the same vent, don't want to have to worry about siphoning and whatnot. Again more stuff, but might be worth it.
Just watched a video about a guy ferrying a new plane across the Atlantic. He couldn't get fuel out of his ferry tank because of what sounds like a clogged vent, ended up rigging a tube to blow in the tank and pressurize it to get him across. Got me thinking about this.
My latest idea is to have a vent line run from the outbd of the tank near the filler neck to a ball valve on the wing root. If I suspect a vent has been clogged or put on backward I can open the ALT vent valve and vent from the cabin. No exposure to the outside, no cross vent, can be easily checked/drained, a completely redundant tank vent. 1/4" lines and fittings would be extra weight sure, but not that bad for the functionality. Plus I'd now have a cabin-side fitting to plumb a ferry tank if I ever needed.
Question is do I do this to the aux tanks too? I don't think I want to connect the aux and main tanks via the same vent, don't want to have to worry about siphoning and whatnot. Again more stuff, but might be worth it.
Just watched a video about a guy ferrying a new plane across the Atlantic. He couldn't get fuel out of his ferry tank because of what sounds like a clogged vent, ended up rigging a tube to blow in the tank and pressurize it to get him across. Got me thinking about this.
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