Isn’t red the colour used for 100LL labels etc.?
I had red jerrycans. I went to Tesco Inverness to fill them. The first pump didn’t work. Leaving my car, I carried them to the nearest pump being vacated. It didn’t work. And some more. Then an angry lassie appeared from the counter.
“Excuse me, red cans are for deisel, and your trying to put unleaded in them”
I denied this, saying I was putting EN228 Mogas, as approved by the European Aviation Safety Agency, which I had a right to do as an EU citizen.
She demanded to see this authority, and I produced and started to read the EU document on transport I had printed out and kept handy.
A few minutes of gobbledegook, and she went back and switched the pump on.
Afterwards I sprayed my jerrycans green, to avoid bother.
Usually red cans are stronger and cost more than green ones.
if any wants to use a “jerrycan” i can recommend something like this
as they are not painted so less chance of rubbish in the fuel and they are very robust
Peter wrote:
Attitudes to risk do vary…
Between fuel starvation and fuel fire, one rationally will choose the first one as it gives more time in the air 
Unless flying above arctic circle (e.g. Alaska, Yellowknife), a tow aviation fuel browser will cost you 1-2K£ and has cheaper highway transportation cost than a regular flying commute. Besides, you can sell much of it back to visitors…
In southern Europe, the weather is hot & you can drive your car in highways, so it is mainly attitude to risk rather than financials or convenience 
Yes; climbing from sea level to outer space increases the stress on the cylinder by 1 bar, i.e. about 1/200 (for a 3000psi cylinder) i.e. 0.5%.
A leaky jerrycan would leak more though… I would definitely keep them the right way up.
I probably wrote this before but I know a pilot, based in shall we say southern Europe, who flies a GA plane with about 20 plastic jerrycans (10 litre ones) in the back, full of avgas It’s a great solution for airports with no avgas or with expensive avgas. I did see his plane once, thus loaded. Attitudes to risk do vary…
In a similiar vein I asked some while ago whether I could carry diving tanks in the aircraft. The collective wisdom and answer was yes.
In the ‘old days’ jerrycans of fuel were the only way to fly to (more or less) remote places: getting fuel to strips in the Amazon or Himalayas might otherwise need months on the back of pack animals. This was necessary at the time, and research, infrastructure, and attitudes to risk have improved since the 1930s; but it’s probably still necessary. Susi Air in Indonesia still does this: one in every x flights in the mountains takes a full load of Jet-A1 in plastic barrels for subsequent aircraft to refuel. Closer to home, in their heyday Robin demonstrator aircraft would have jerrycans to guarantee the return flight; any passengers would have to carry them on their knees.
I used to fly an Aquila run on mogas, which meant a round trip to the petrol station and pouring/spilling fuel, but a microlight pilot recommended a siphon hose with a ball bearing at one end – a quick shake to get the flow started and the jerrycan is empty in a couple of minutes. I think it was called super jiggler. Interestingly we never earthed the aircraft, but I don’t now remember why. :/
Following from Maoraigh’s jacket there was a freak accident in France of someone wearing nylon downwind of an aircraft being fuelled causing a fire. I’ll try to find either the Info-Pilote article or BEA report.
On a frosty winter night, after flying, I put two jerrycans of 4* into our wood and fabric Jodel, earthing the funnel to the metal can. No problems.
After shutting the hangar, as I sat in my car, in the dark before starting, I unzipped my leather jacket, with a nylon lining, which was worn over a wool sweater.
A display of electrical flashes lit up.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The odd thing is that cars need not be grounded while MOGAS is more volatile than AVGAS. I’ve never heard of explosions in petrol stations either.
As a fire investigator (and a floatplane pilot), I deal with some of these issues frequently. First, modern jerrycans are fairly safe. However, there are a few things to consider:
1) If there is a measurable amount of fuel in the can (and the cap is closed) the headspace will be fuel rich (above the upper flammability or explosive limit) and the container will not explode.
2) New designs (and high quality old designs) have flame/spark arrestors at the cap to prevent a flame front burning back into the can as it is emptied (and fresh air drawn in to dilute the fuel rich air mixture). The following video of jerrycans without spark arrestors makes it appear that a flashback to the can is more likely than I suspect it actually is in real life. I note that they appear to be pouring the last little bit of fuel out when the cans go ‘bang’ (see 1:08 in the video). It is likely they have done this many times in the lab to get it just right (for litigation purposes).
3) As has been mentioned in previous posts mogas has a terrible odour. A very small spill in an enclosed space will make it uninhabitable (to me, but perhaps I am sensitive ). This is well below the explosive limit. I would not want to spill any mogas in a nice aircraft. Although one poster mentioned ‘a perfect’ fuel-air mixture at some distance above a small spill, it is unlikely for this to be ignited. If it is ignited, there will be a soft ‘pop’, and then the fire will go out (similar to an open/closed cup flashpoint test apparatus). If the conditions are just right, the vapour coming off the spill might continue to burn, but if the cap is on the can or there is a flash arrestor, there will be no explosion of the container itself.
Because of the odour and oily residue from mogas, I prefer to use avgas in jerrycans for remote refueling. I find that it evaporates with much less residue on your hands, clothes, etc..
I believe the biggest risk from jerrycan use is a large spill at either end, for example when filling the cans, when pouring them into the aircraft, or when there is a fuel leak on the ground. As mentioned previously these can be ignited by static discharge from clothing, a poor electrical connection, an arc off a switch, etc. I have investigated quite a number of incidents where automotive technicians have been seriously injured when repairing a fuel leak from a car. I discussed this with my aircraft mechanic, and he admitted that several times he has been apprehensive when there was a large pool of fuel that had been spilled from a leaking wing tank. The video below shows the combustible vapour cloud in slow motion at (1:10). As a result, I am extremely careful when an open container of fuel is being handled! Also, as has been stated in a previous post, I don’t fill the cans to the brim. This gives you a bit of room to work with and helps prevent spilling.
Of course, sometimes people are not aware of the vapour cloud (as in the video above) and get caught in the results of the ensuing vapour cloud ignition. If the ignition is inside a structure which is strong enough for the pressure to build via the expanding hot gas, then an explosion will occur when the structure fails and the pressure is released. Here is another one.
