ORIGINAL: seanreit
Eddie, I was paying close attention to the leak in the pipe that you are referring to, as I thought inititally that you were helping out with a megabar. Regardless, I saw what appeared to be at least 16 ounces of raw fuel coming out the back of that pipe under it's hottest condition (idle waiting to go out on the flight line). I saw Eddie's face of concern and you told him to take the main hatch off. He did.
You stuck your face right down in there and looked back at him and said "good to go".
You kept tilting the airplane back letting more fuel drain. If hotfueling was dangerous, I would not do it. I've hotfueld probably 50 times and over sprayed a few ounces of fuel here and there. This stuff simply won't cause a problem doing the hotfueling.
Sean
Talk about something to worry about.... That plane "Large scratch built sport jet by Eddie Lazono not Eddie Weeks" what happen was
the main fuel valve was left open... I have done this... more than once... The result was when air
was shot into the engine to spin it up a mist of Jet A drifted out the back end. I sniffed it .. hahha.. and sure
enough it was fuel... Normally we pick up the plane and get all the fuel out of the engine.. But the
plane was just to large to do this... So I told them to go ahead and I will man the fire extinguisher
The result was of course a some what warm start... not bad enough for me to put out..
Some how during the startup lots of fuel made its way into the tail pipe then into the double wall
pipe... When I pushed the plane up the hill with the engine running, like Sean said, lots of fuel 10-20 oz
poured out the back of the plane onto the plywood... I stuck my head in the plane to see if the fuse was full
of fuel also, but it was dry...
Now think about this... The engine is running, fuel is getting blown by the exhaust out of the plane,
a lot more is just pouring all over the ground.. I mean how bad can it get.. ?
Nothing happened... The plane flew fine...
My point behind all this is.... I can not think of one failure or screw up during a hot fuel, that has
more chances of fire than what I just described... Thus my conclusion that hot fueling not a hazard in anyway..
Eddie Weeks