RW Flight: A TOMATOFLAMES Cancelled my Flight

ATOMATOFLAMES? So I went to take a IRL flight today in the G1000 172. I was assigned a rental aircraft and began my pre-flight when I noticed an issue. This crazy acronym may look strange but it’s a great way to remember FAA regulation 91.205 here in the U.S. which is the required equipment list for day VFR flight. Spelled out, it stands for:

A – airspeed indicator
T – tachometer (for each engine)
O – oil pressure gauge (for each engine using a pressure system)
M – manifold pressure gauge (for each altitude engine)
A – altimeter
T – temperature gauge (for each liquid cooled engine)
O – oil temperature gauge (for each engine)
F – fuel gauge
L – landing gear position indicator
A – anti-collision lights
M – magnetic compass
E – ELT
S – safety belts

The 8th step of my G1000 172 checklist is “Fuel Quantity Indicators”. my right side indicator had a nice red “X” through it, meaning The G1000 wasn’t sensing fuel. In all my years of flying the G1000, I’ve never flown an aircraft where I had this issue.

Physically checking the right fuel tank, I noticed it was full to the top - normally the rentals are filled “to the tabs” in the tanks, which instead of 53 gal of usable fuel, you get 35 gal. Plenty of fuel for local flying and gives you more useful load.

When I went into the facility and informed, they told me that when the tanks are full to the top, the float in the tank can sometimes read negative, causing the issue. Usually after a little fuel burns off, the gauge would come back on line and read normally. Learned something new here, however…

ATOMATOFLAMES and the lesson. The FAA is very clear here. BOTH fuel gauges must be operable. Now, I could have decided to fire up taxi out, do my normal run-up and hope that by then, the gauge would come online. But what if it didn’t? Now I’m burning money sitting around waiting for something that I know is required to work. Also, ramp checks by the FAA do happen. I bet that would not have gone well.

Long story short - the fuel gauges are a requirement, it didn’t work, and since I’d already lost time, I decided to postpone my flying for the day. While in flight simulator, we don’t have to think of these things as usually things work all the time. Of course that’s not the case in the real airplane. If you are flying the simulator and aspiring to receive your pilot certificate, these are the type of decisions you’ll have to make and having a good understanding of the regulations, your specific airplane, and your personal minimums are critical. Just thought I’d share a bit of real-world experience from today’s “scrubbed” flight.

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Maybe they’ll fix that in the next update…

LOL yes, hopefully. Otherwise I’ll just avoid flying that tail number.

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