I know this is stating the obvious but really you ought to speak to the syndicate about doing something about making the duty drawback distributed more equitably.
Having the drawback going back to the syndicate funds is the second best thing, and is easy enough to administer, and avoids the common abuse of one member doing repeated flights from say Lydd to Le Touquet and getting free flying by pocketing the drawback, but then one gets the incentive to fly to the Channel Islands with minimum fuel, which is not a good idea because persistent bad weather there tends to hang around a long time.
A very good point.
At the moment drawback goes to group funds and and fuelling profit/loss goes to the individual. I would prefer the reverse, where we keep our drawback but forego profit/loss on fuel.
I fly an Arrow II.
With the power settings I use, at altitues between 4 & 8K I find that properly leaned I burn 36 ltrs per hour. Occasionally I don't lean it exactly perfect and I burn 38 ltrs per hour.
If I forget to lean for some reason then I'm burning in the region of 43-45 ltrs per hour.
The thank holds 183 ltrs so in theory I've just over 5 hours of fuel, if perfectly leaned.
I won't plan a flight that is longer than 3.5 hours in the air, so that's 1.5 hours reserve available. (Or if taking off with less than full tanks, I won't plan to land with less than 1.5 hours on board).
Of course taxiing time eats into that, and perhaps I don't have it perfectly leaned or indeed I forget to lean after take off. Or if taking off with partially full tanks, by measurement was out by a few litres. Of course a small amount of that is unuseable anyway.
I've set a mental rule in my mind that if I hit 3.5 hours in the air, then I will land at the next available aerodrome irrespective of how close my destination is.
I appreciate that many will say that's stupid or too risk adverse, but I've ready too many accident reports of people thinking they they could get there and rationalising to themselves that they have longer endurance than they have.
Things have a way of going wrong at the wrong point in time. ATC asking you to hold because an airliner has called up on the same frequency, a piece of bad weather adding a few track miles to your route, getting a longer zone entry route than you'd expected. Better to have a reserve to deal with this.
With 1.5 hours spare, fuel worries rarely enter into my mind when things aren't working out right, which is much more likely with VFR flight I think. When things go wrong, I've enough to be thinking about without worrying about fuel. At least that's how I see it.
Colm
I've set a mental rule in my mind that if I hit 3.5 hours in the air, then I will land at the next available aerodrome irrespective of how close my destination is.
That is setting personal limits. The problem is respecting it. It is just a few miles to destination, lets try......
Of course if you need to stretch range or endurance there are many things you can do. If endurance is the most important consideration you can double the reserve time you thought you had.
Graham, the fact that you are asking others what reserves they find reasonable means that you are concerned about this. In which case just fill up and accept the extra cost. Accidents have been caused through pilots becoming pre-occupied with a single issue.
You didn't ask about the legality, but since that's my department...
The UK has the most liberal rules on fuel planning, requiring sufficient fuel for the intended flight, and a safe margin for contingencies.
ICAO Annex 6 Part II rules require you taxi out with sufficient fuel to fly to your destination, from there to an alternate if one is required, and thence for 45 mins (30 mins for day VFR).
EASA Part-NCO rules, coming in a few years, mirror Annex 6. However, there's an additional rule that effectively says that the 45 mins is a reserve and cannot be burned in flight as a contingency.
Personally, on IFR flights home (which tend to be the limiting ones) I plan for 2 hours to overhead destination, knowing that my usual alternate is about 30 mins away.
Good point raised by Peter about the accuracy and experience. For those who are not that profficient - there is a another golden rule - always plan to arrive with 1/4 of you tank. Well, maybe a stretch for those with long range tanks but still....
