Hi. I’ve been flying the Diamond DA40NG and noticed that fuel is only being drawn from the left tank. How do I change this so fuel is drawn from both tanks equally?
That’s exactly how it should work. The real DA40 does the same thing, takes fuel from the left tank and feeds unused fuel into the right tank. To transfer fuel from the right into the left tank you have to use the fuel transfer pump switch located at the instrument panel. If for any reason the xfer pump doesn’t work, you can select the right tank manually by flipping the fuel selector into the emergency position.
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What lusetoflyboeing said.
From the airplane’s operating manual (free download on Diamond’s support site):
Fuel is stored in the fuel tanks which are located in the wings. Normally fuel is taken from
the MAIN tank (left wing).[…]
With the help of an electrical transfer pump fuel can be transferred from the AUX tank
(right wing) to the MAIN tank (left wing) manually.The transfer pump is switched off automatically when the auxiliary tank is empty or the
main tank is full.If fuel transfer with the transfer pump becomes impossible for any reason, fuel can also
be taken directly from the AUX tank (right wing) by switching the fuel valve to the
EMERGENCY position. As the return line* goes back into the MAIN tank (left wing), fuel
will then be transferred from right to left fuel tank.CAUTION
Switching the fuel valve to the EMERGENCY position will start
the transferring of fuel with the help of the electrically driven
and engine driven fuel pumps from the auxiliary tank through
the fuel return line to the main tank at a rate of approximately
45 US gal/h (170 liter/h) with FUEL PUMPS switch in OFF
position. The fuel valve must be switched back to the
NORMAL position before the auxiliary tank indication reads
zero. If the fuel valve is not switched back to the NORMAL
position, the engine will stop running as soon as the auxiliary
tank is empty.
*Return line takes unburnt fuel from the engine back to the (main) tank. Not idea if this is modelled in the sim or not.
Oh this is great thanks everyone! So if fuel is running low in the main tank (left) I switch the fuel pump on to divert fuel from right tank into main tank? I’m sure I switched fuel pump on before and it didn’t seem to work
Correct, if MAIN is low or the aircraft starts to lean to one side due to the weight difference in the wings you use the transfer pump to bring fuel over from AUX.
Did a flight in the DA40 NG yesterday and it worked fine. Just be patient, it takes a bit of time.
Ok thanks I’ll give it a try
Ok that seemed to work thanks! While we’re on the Diamond, do you know if you can see weather in the Garmin in this plane?
@ApeJim Usually you would want the difference in between the tanks not to exceed 9(?) gallons upon landing. So its not recommended to drain the left tank empty before you use the xfer pump.
For the weather radar: the DA40 is not equipped with a real WX Radar, however, the real one usually comes with a Stormscope. I.e.: it shows you lightning activity on the MFD and therefore can be used to identify thunderstorms, however, personally I wouldn’t really trust the indications too much. This is currently not simulated tho.
Does this apply to the X Cub as well? There is a fuel pump switch in it as well
This does not however work in the DA40 TDI. Even switching the fuel selector to emergency seems to drain the left tank. Before that i had the fuel pump on for over an hour with no fuel transfer at all. Very bugged.
Hadn’t flown the TDI yet.
Just tried it out and can confirm the transfer pump appears to not do anything but switch its light on the annunciator panel. Time for a bug ticket I guess.
Actually there is a weather function of sorts. Certainly shows cloud cover. I found it today. It’s called Natrax or something like that.
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