F-4 Fuel Capacity

[Luisa Rodocker]

I am sorry for asking this question, but I have conflicting information. What I always believed/ understood was that the F model 1967 had 2.5gal of unusable fuel. With a 64 gallon fuel capacity. I just purchased my new to me Mooney and when reading the POH it said it has 64 gallons of useable fuel. In no other place in the POH does it have any other number besides 64 gallons.

Not to hijack this thread but 48 lbs of unusable fuel for certain K models? That is roughly 8 gals of unusable fuel? Seems like a lot. Nice to see that my little old C model only has about 1/2 gal of unusable fuel (3.4 lbs).

In my C, the Operators Manual lists the useable fuel at 52 gallons. The TCDS shows 3.4 pounds being unuseable. But with bladders installed, according to the STC paperwork and flight manual supplement, it now has 57.3 total gallons capacity, 54.8 gallons useable, 2.5 gallons unuseable. When the airplane was reweighed last year, All fuel was completely drained, then 1 1/4 gallons per side were added and then weighed. Later I ran the engine at idle on the unuseable fuel. Ran for 10 or so when I noticed the fuel pressure gauge on 0. I turned the boost pump on and the pressure came back up for about another minute before I shut it down.

30 years and a whole bunch of hours ago I put 39.4 gallons into a C-172 that held 40 gallons total. After a night flight. Because I was stupid enough to listen to a guy just because he was a King Air pilot.

I am surprised that with the upcoming release of 1.15, there is still no correction for the fuel tank capacity of the 321. As it sits, the 321 uses the 320 capacity. How can you do cross country flights without the tank capacity that the 321 is supposed to have.

According to: the tank capacity is 24,050kg (which is 53,021lbs for those of us, including me that use pounds). Why has this not been corrected? As it sits right now you could not do a 321 flight from CLT-SFO (which US Airways does frequently) without that tank capacity.

Yes but US and NK here in the US use the 53,000 tanks. I believe this is also going to be used by B6 for theirs as well to provide the cross country flying without tech stopping. I believe it may be more realistic for the product if it were provided as an option, or any way to edit the config to allow that.

I'm using FSX-SE. I notice that the PMDG DC-6B aircraft.cfg file contains two definitions for fuel capacity. The 3322 gallon capacity is active, the 5512 gallon capacity is commented out. I think many actual DC-6s/C-118s did hold 5512 gallons of fuel and I've seen discussions about the PMDG version of the DC-6 expanding to 10 tanks which would then allow the increases fuel capacity.

Is it possible to activate the 5512 gallon capacity in the PMDG DC-6 and if so, how? I replaced the 3322 gallon capacity with 5512 in my C-118. The fuel gauges showed the increase. The load manager also showed the increase but when I tweaked a fuel tank window in the load manager, the fuel capacity reverted to 3322. Is there a way around this limitation? Has anyone tried expanding the fuel capacity successfully?

The PMDG load manager isn't designed for the higher capacity, and as you've noticed will revert to it's own settings when you change fuel in it. Use the default payload screen to set the higher fuel values, and don't touch fuel quantities in the payload manager

I didn't change the fuel quantities for the DC-6A because I wanted to keep that one in a more "modern" configuration (recreate Everts Air Fuel operations). You could try copying the information but I don't know how well that works. (Reading the official forum it looks like that worked for you.. remember it's 5404 not 5504 gallons)

Even without touching the settings in the (PMDG) payload manager, as soon as I set 5512 Gallons, the needles rise to the new quantity, then immediately get overriden and set to the last position of the (PMDG) payload manager, even if it's not open. Using SHIFT+Z I can see the fuel quantity get changed back too....

the "//" comments out the unused portion of the file. Save the file (I didn't save it the first time so nothing changed) and restart the sim. You should then see in increased fuel capacity. It should be stable as long as you don't tweak the fuel settings with the Load Master fuel configuration tool. Let me know if this works.

Hello!
I'm a bit confused.. Does this modification works with P3D v4? And what exactly should I write in the .cfg? the "CONFIG for Serial 43819 and up --- total 5512 gallons" part?
I'm sorry I'm asking althought you already explained it here quite thoroughly..
Greetings,

Quentin Barthlemy

Jim Driskell's instructions above should be pretty clear. First to answer your question: yes, the modification works in P3D v4 (with the exception of the load manager...fuel has to be set via the P3D menu).

If you look closely at the instructions above, the two slash marks "//" at the start of each line indicate what is actively read in the cfg file. If the slash marks are not present, that is the actively read cfg configuration. (Hence, when the two slash marks are present, the configuration is not read.)

Don't use the fuel manager. It will revert the fuel quantities to the old smaller values. If you have to set the fuel amount use direct entry in the the fuel window. I mentioned this to PMDG but they are busy with other projects so there is no time frame for a fix to the DC-6/C-118.

As a test, I made two simple mods, one for the C152, and one for the A320. In both cases, I doubled the capacity of the LeftMain tank. For the A320, I also increased max_gross_weight in [WEIGHT AND BALANCE] to some arbitrary value. Please find the mods here:

Ah, okay thanks. I had noticed that the Asobo neo fuel tank capacities do not agree with the FAA and EASA data sheets and wondered if maybe you were trying to correct for the same thing. The data sheets show 3 tanks with a max capacity of 6267 gallons of usable fuel whereas the sim uses 5 tanks and 7000 gallons.

260 miles on one tank is surely an outlier - on a flat straight backroad at steady 60-65mph, and probably with a slight tail wind. My regular range (outside the city) until fueling was 200-210 miles at around 45mpg. Maybe I had a very frugal FJ or I am just a geezer ?

95% of time I fill up on the centerstand. Now I've got to believe the stated capacity but have never had it bone dry and filled up. I always try to get the gas to just pop up through the holes at the bottom of the filler neck but not overflow. Why be wasteful and risk overflowing with premium? I did once have it overflow when the darn pump filler gun stuck open, and gas ran up and over everything. I was so pissed I ran into the station and grabbed 2 gallon bottles of drinking water without paying, and ran back out and rinsed off the bike. I then went back in and yelled at and warned the attendant about the defective pump! Consequently, I fumed the whole way home, which was not far enough to need to fill up again, and dont recall subsequent total mileage. The next day I stripped off all the bodywork, washed the bike and plastic, and protective spray treated everything before reassembly. The gas station owner said they checked the pump and found nothing wrong. BS!

Being somewhat elderly, I cant remember for sure the farthest I've gone on a full tank but I know it was under 200 and that was taking it VERY easy (for me anyway) just to see how far it'd go. If I recall I maybe had 2/10ths of a gallon left out of the 4.78 gallon capacity. It's not supposed to be a true 4.8...

I've hit 200 miles a few times, but get too nervous to go further than that. I know the bike has more range, because when I fill up after running 200 miles, I don't even come close hitting the fuel capacity of the tank (as stated by Yamaha).

I bought an extra fuel container, when I first got my FJ 09, but stopped carrying it about a year after I got the bike. I know I can go 200+ miles, and when I get to 150 miles, I start looking for gas. I haven't had a situation where I couldn't find gas with 50 miles left in the tank. I also have an AMA membership which will get me a fuel delivery if I do ever run out.

It might be possible to add some capacity by peening holes in filler neck.I know the people over at the s10 forum do this mod including myself and on that tank adds .3 to .4 tenths of a gallon.That air space is there for a reason and if you fill all the way up you need to ride it now.

When I use my '15 for just commuting, I do so on B Mode, set the cruise at 65, do 50 miles of uninterrupted freeway, and I always gas up 200+ miles. Usually it takes 4.3 gallons, so I know that under those conditions I still have another 25 miles in fuel.

Over the last couple weeks playing I've noticed something a little odd. when spawning into a hornet I've noticed the internal fuel level fluctuates. keeping in mind that the percentage bar is always at 100% and the engines are just coming to life so it hasn't been all been burnt.

The number appears to fluctuate by about 250lbs. So is the hornet modeled to include everything from expansion at different temperatures and fuel densities? because you're blowing my mind if that's the case. And if so I'm curious to know if it is something modeled on other aircraft.

So fuel capacity is measured in lbs, the weight of jet fuel changes based on atmosphere. So on different maps or with different weather conditions, a full fuel load while having the same volume, will have different weights.

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