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Fuelstop Portugal/Spain before Atlantic Crossing

90 Posts

24-Oct-15 11:10

Great trip!
Only seen it this morning here, so a bit late.
Eric (the brave) is the man; he made his mind up and simply went on his trip.
It’s not always easy to do that, but with good planning and steely resolution it can be done.
And many thanks for posting, to you Espen!

Last Edited by complex-pilot at 24 Oct 11:33

EGNX

27-Oct-15 14:17

Hello, All. I’m the (apparently) crazy pilot who undertook this trip.

I haven’t historically been much of a forum participant, but some of the discussion here was interesting and I’d like to offer up my experiences to anyone else interested in making this trip. I’m slightly more active on Beechtalk (which Espen graciously cross-posted for me). Here’s an overall technical summary of my preparations. I’m happy to answer any questions that can help anyone.

There were some very good posts both here on Beechtalk and on EuroGA regarding my preparations for and decision-making for this flight. Having successfully finished it, it’s probably worth a debrief. Maybe this info can help the next person who would like to try this. With good preparation and patience, it’s eminently doable with as capable a machine as the Bonanza.

First I’ll cover the ferry tank, since that was in place already for my trip to southern Africa. Then I’ll discuss the HF, other equipment, and finally weather planning. I’ll try not to leave anything out but will be happy to answer any other questions that arise.

1. Ferry Tank

In the spring, before I even contemplated this trip, I was planning a trip from Malta to southern Africa for my wife’s 50th birthday. I needed to get the Bonanza to Tanzania where I could pick up my wife and son (who were to fly commercially). I couldn’t overfly Libya or South Sudan thanks to MANPADS (shoulder-mounted rocket launchers!!!); avgas and handling are expensive and difficult in Egypt and Sudan; and there is no avgas in Ethiopia (though I’ve heard that if you have connections it can be had) or most of Kenya. So I ordered a Turtlepac 100. A ferry tank can be installed for a single ferry trip using just a Form 337 as long as you don’t go over gross weight. If you go over gross, you have to also have a Special Airworthiness Certificate/Special Flight Permit for overgross. I suspected both flights could be done at gross (or close enough) and the SFP requires inspection by a DAR (as opposed to just an IA for the 337), so I went that route. (In the end I had to stop in Egypt anyway, but that’s another story.)

I did most of the installation myself under the supervision of my A&P. I ordered the pump system with the tank from Turtlepac, which is basically a motorcycle fuel injector pump that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket. It is complete up to the point where you feed into the fuel system. Considering the Bonanza’s fuel system, I thought it best to use it as a transfer pump into the right main tank. Feeding the engine directly is a no-no: the installation would then be classified as a major modification and would require more than the one-time 337. Not to mention it would be unreliable and unsafe. The idea is to feed the engine off the left tank while filling the right tank from the ferry tank; the return line to the right tank does not have a check valve like the feed line does on some models. So you have to feed the engine from the left tank only while transferring, or else you could possibly run out of fuel to feed the engine while doing the transfer and end up with unusable fuel in the ferry tank. I thought of trying to figure out some manual backup but it would increase the number of connections that could leak and introduce extra complications. In practice you would transfer fuel pretty early in the flight and should have most of it transferred before your PET (the Turtlepac holds less than tip tanks plus mains), so the window where a pump failure would be a disaster is limited or nonexistent.

The stock fuel selector valve has an elbow feeding into the right tank return line. I replaced this elbow with a tee and got an Aeroquip-type hose from Aircraft Specialty http://www.aircraftspecialty.com/ that coupled the – 6D pump hose to the – 4D tee. I also put a shutoff valve and a check valve in series. I may consider taking the check valve out for the next time—with the shutoff, it’s not really necessary and just adds two extra joints to potentially leak. The only issue I had was that the fuel selector handle interferes with the braided hose, which comes straight up from the tee—so I have to take the handle off to switch, no big deal. No modification of the original system was necessary—I can easily replace the tee with the original elbow and it will be precisely the original installation. As long as I think I may soon use the tank again, though, I just cap off the tee.

I built a platform that sits on the rear seat tracks, running from the back of the rear seat rails to the back of the front seats. It’s built out of 3/4" thick plywood. There is also a 3/4" plywood cutout sitting on the floor between the front and rear seats to distribute the forward weight (that section of floor is rated to 300 lbs). Then I built a “plus” out of the same 3/4" plywood that rests on this base and on which the upper platform rests; the plus is collapsible so the whole thing folds down nicely, allowing me to take it with me in Africa without using up much space or weight. I made some cutouts in the area of the emergency gear extension handle to allow its use if necessary. I also covered the platform and any protrusions on the sidewalls with thin, light foam from an exercise mat to protect the rubberized Turtlepac. The whole empty ferry tank setup weighed about 25 lbs, the same as one rear seat. I used the existing rear straps to strap the tank from the rear in the event of a forced landing, and tie-down straps attached to the seat frame to hold the tank from slipping backwards on takeoff (these shouldn’t see much force).

Here’s my checklist for turning on the pump:

1. Verify that pump switch is off
2. Plug in pump
3. Switch fuel selector to left tank
4. Open shutoff valve
5. Turn pump switch to on
6. Verify shutoff valve is open, fuel selector is on left tank, pump LED is lit, and right tank level is increasing
7. Record all fuel flow, fuel level, engine, and airspeed parameters
8. Feel major joints for leaks
9. Don’t overfill! Set a timer or something to remind you to check regularly.

In practice I get a flow rate of just under a gallon per minute. I take off on the right tank, run it down from 40G to 20G, then switch to the left tank and do the transfer to fill back up to just shy of 40G. Then back to feeding the engine from the right. I do this 4 times over the course of the flight and I’ve transferred all my fuel (I only fill to about 60G to keep under max gross). I still have over half a tank in the left main by the time I’m finished transferring (if I’m running at 12 GPH or so). I tested the setup on a shorter flight before relying on it. I was also concerned that the pump might be too much for the 5A limit on the cigarette lighter, but it only popped one time in testing when I ran it without first opening the shutoff valve—it was always perfectly fine in flight. The shutoff valve sometimes leaks a very small amount of fuel, especially near the end when there is air mixed with the fuel, but it’s barely enough to wet my hand.

I couldn’t be happier with the installation.

2. HF Radio

Major kudos to Espen Jakobsen for providing the expertise here, though I have to take a lot of the blame for the MacGuyveresque attachment to the tip tanks…

We used an Icom IC-7000 and an SGC-270 tuner. I unscrewed the original external temperature probe to open up a hole for the antenna to exit the fuselage. A temperature probe is a regulatory requirement in Greenland, but I have one in my EDM-930 to satisfy that (smart) requirement. The tuner and radio sit near the back of the cabin, away from most of the other avionics, and the antenna and power run forward under the fuel tank platform. The IC-7000 has a detachable head, so the small head and handheld mic sat in my lap or the copilot seat while the bulkier part of the radio was in the back. We tapped into a screw on the positive bus bar under the circuit breakers for power (the airplane is a 1974 V35B at 14V) and the tuner and radio were grounded to the airframe via the rear seat rail screws. The IC-7000 uses a standard 2.5mm output jack which I fed into the audio input on my audio panel.

Coax ran forward from the tuner to the temperature probe hole, where we mated it to the bare external antenna wire (from Aircraft Spruce’s ADF kit http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/a … tenna2.php) with regular terminal hardware. Then the antenna wire was wrapped around a piece of flexible tube to anchor it inside the fuselage, and run through the temperature probe hole. It goes to the tip tank and then back to under a screw at the tail. At both the tip tank and the tail, the isolators from the ADF kit were used to keep it isolated from the fuselage.

The mounting to the tip tank was the tricky part. I have the D’Shannon tip tanks and there wasn’t a nice screw to put a bracket under (at least not without breaking the paint barrier). So I wrapped some rubber matting about 1.5" wide around the tip tank just ahead of the joint with the wing and behind the filler cap to protect the paint, then wrapped a tougher woven plastic mat (a table runner actually!) over the top of that to take the stress. Then we wrapped safety wire around the tank over this padding a couple of times, then made a loop out towards the fuselage about 6" out, and then back around the tank in the opposite direction several times and twisted the two loose ends together. This was then covered with an aluminized mylar tape (chosen just because it has a nicer adhesive than duct tape). Originally I was using bailing twine and duct tape in place of safety wire and mylar tape but elected to go for the modern version. This worked extremely well.

We had one glitch initially: we had the shielding from the antenna coax at the tuner end grounded to the airframe, but were getting strange glitches on the IC-7000 where it would suddenly change mode and frequency when transmitting, almost like it was getting some spike that caused a partial reset. When we removed this ground, it was fine. The tuner was also making strange noises when tuning before we removed this ground. Espen said the ground worked on his install in a T210, so no telling why this was a problem, but everything was normal after we removed the ground.

In flight, I powered on the IC-7000, ensured it was set to USB, AGCF, and VOXA (or VOXB). I tested with one of the volmet frequencies you can find on the Jeppesen Atlantic chart. I tuned this (or the assigned) frequency, and if it were a new frequency the tuner hadn’t seen, whistled into the mic (as long as no one was actively transmitting) to help the tuner. Then adjusted the squelch to minimize the background noise subject to getting a good signal and adjusting the volume to comfort. This worked amazingly well. I could always hear the transmissions and was told I was at least 4×4, sometimes 5×5. The only issue was that there was some strange resonance between my voice and the engine (possibly) that I could hear—though apparently the controllers didn’t hear this.

3. If All Else Fails…

I had a Winslow 4-person Ultra-light Offshore life raft with a double hull from my flight over the northern (non-HF) route in 2010, freshly packed this summer. I also got a Hansen SeaEco suit and I have a life vest I always used for flying from Malta (every flight for the last 4 years has been an over-water flight…) and a PLB I wear every flight also, as well as a laser flare. I got a ditch bag to fill with food, satphone, battery charger, water, clothes, first aid kit, etc. I left this open in flight for easy access to the food, but could quickly close it in the event of a ditching.

4. Planning

For several months, I had been watching windyty.com and/or null.earthschool.net to get a feel for the wind and storm patterns. I also cross-referenced with NOAA’s annotated North Atlantic Forecast products. But for detailed planning, what I liked the best was the GFS model output maps available on http://weatheronline.co.uk under “Expert Charts.” I used this also for the planning for my Africa trip. I found most useful the Precipitation and CAPE/Convective Index for judging storm potential, the Freezing Level for obvious reasons, and of course the 950mB and 500mB winds (unfortunately they don’t show mid-level winds but you can get a good idea from these two). I also looked once or twice at the swell size—it showed as 14 ft at highest across the route, which I could imagine would be difficult but not impossible to ditch in.

It may have looked like Espen and I got the radio installed and then I shot off immediately across like a wind-up toy, but in fact I had been watching Friday Oct 23 for at least a week and a half as being the last good opportunity for a week or so to cross by either the southern or one of the northern routes. The forecast had been amazingly stable. Winds up high weren’t very good, but I figured I could go low where they were quite favorable (15 kt headwind at most). Freezing level was way up above FL100 all the way to within a few hundred miles of Newfoundland. Precip seemed almost nonexistent up to St. John’s, where it was just going to be coming in around when I arrived (but freezing level was still reasonably high and there was no fog or low ceiling in the WUnderground forecast). I planned for enough fuel to get to Gander or Moncton, my alternates. So my only area of concern was St. John’s, but you can’t have everything…

I didn’t think we would get the HF installed so quickly at Espen’s, so I didn’t think Friday would be an option. I was prepared to wait a week or two somewhere where I could pick a northern or southern route as soon as one became safely doable. With the ferry tank and HF radio I could take any route. But the HF install was done well before end of day on Wednesday, so after a last bit of troubleshooting Thursday morning to figure out we needed to disconnect the antenna coax ground, off I went to Santa Maria. I had to do half of that flight over the ocean in the dark, which wasn’t optimal, but it was nearly a full moon so ditching was eminently doable.

The forecast turned out to be exactly accurate. The HF worked perfectly. I landed with 6 hours of fuel in the tanks. Perfect flight!

Please ask if there are any questions—I’d like to leave some good notes for the next person who wants to do this.

Crazy Bonanza Pilot

KHWO LMML

27-Oct-15 14:57

Wow! What a wealth of information! Thanks for sharing!

PS envy for your “landing with six hours of fuel” – myself (and probably several more, round here) cannot even take off with so much.

Last Edited by at 27 Oct 15:00

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

27-Oct-15 14:59

BonanzaEric wrote:

So I ordered a Turtlepac 100. [..] I only fill to about 60G to keep under max gross

100% the setup I use, had the same thoughts about how to pump, how to connect, number of valves/fittings, spilling risks, etc. Filling the Turtlepac to 100% would put me over gross (18h endurance) but I intentionally chose the big Turtlepac because it’s not really airframe or even aviation specific and there will always be good uses for it. It can be filled to any level and when empty it’s small and lightweight.

BonanzaEric wrote:

I ordered the pump system with the tank from Turtlepac, which is basically a motorcycle fuel injector pump that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket.

It’s a fuel pump from Holley, not for motorcycles but for big V8 car engines. Well, unless your motorcycle has 350hp

My setup is a simple inline pump like yours but another pilot I know has a dual redundant setup. He bought 2 fuel pumps, put them in a plywood box in parallel with valves. His thinking was that he does not want to have a single point of failure. Another aspect is the electric system, what if your fuse blows, alternator fails, etc. I would carry a LiPoFe battery strong enough to empty the Turtlepac. For this I have determined the power draw and sized a battery. I myself do not typically go on trips where I need to extend the endurance, I only go to places where Avgas is scarce so I can pump on the ground which is why my setup does not have this full redundancy at the moment.

I am a bit surprised you went with a single pump relying on the aircraft electric system. You definitely have balls of steel!

BonanzaEric wrote:

I had a Winslow 4-person Ultra-light Offshore life raft with a double hull [..] I got a ditch bag to fill with food, satphone, battery charger, water, clothes, first aid kit, etc.

Do you have any information about the rescue options available on that trip? Even if a successful ditching can be made, would it be realistic to be found and picked up in time? When there is no landmass near, helicopters cannot help you, first ships have to drive near, potentially with helicopters on deck. I believe there are almost no ships there so I would assume that even after a successful ditching one would probably die for lack of water and/or food.

I think you’ve prepared very well and you know what you’re doing. Even though I’m a risk taker myself, I have to admit that I would not have had the guts to do this trip with the aircraft and equipment you had. In case something happens, there are extremely few options.

27-Oct-15 15:02

Many thanks for a brilliant post, Eric

I fixed the formatting issues which were caused by a hyphen immediately joined to a character triggering a special formatting action (a strike-through).

Administrator

Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

27-Oct-15 16:06

achimha wrote:

I am a bit surprised you went with a single pump relying on the aircraft electric system.

Even if the pump had failed at the worst time, I could have returned to my point of origin. I had visions of me splicing out the pump for a direct connection and bodily squishing down the Turtlepac to force-feed it, but yeah, the only real option is to return to origin. So not an issue at all for this flight. If the headwinds had been 50kt it would have been, which was why I was so eager to go on Friday when they were only 10-15 kt.

achimha wrote:

Do you have any information about the rescue options available on that trip? Even if a successful ditching can be made, would it be realistic to be found and picked up in time? When there is no landmass near, helicopters cannot help you, first ships have to drive near, potentially with helicopters on deck. I believe there are almost no ships there so I would assume that even after a successful ditching one would probably die for lack of water and/or food.

I don’t have any direct information on rescue options. I saw one ship during the flight, within an hour of mid-flight (there were always low clouds, so I only had about 25-30% visibility of the ocean). I brought over a week’s worth of water and several days’ worth of food. Water would be the main concern. I suspect if I had radio contact (satphone, SPOT, EPIRB, handheld VHF—quadruple-redundant) and had good coordinates, something would have been arranged within a week or week and a half during which I could survive. I doubt a helicopter would be necessary—most ships have some sort of small tender that would do the job. Also, the first 3 hours were within flight distance of the Azores and the last 2 hours or so within flight distance of St. John’s, so it was only the middle 5 hours or so that were riskier.

But yes, a flight like this carries more risk than the usual flight. You just do what you can to manage it and then decide whether you can accept what’s left. Engine failure probabilities with a proven (not in first 200 hours), well-maintained, recently borescoped/oil-analyzed/compression-tested engine are, to be pessimistic, 1 in 10,000 hours (probably the real answer is a tenth of that). Operated lean of peak at a low power setting it’s probably even less. So a one in a thousand chance over the course of the 10-hour flight. Not negligible, but the odds of unforeseen weather or me doing something stupid dwarf those odds. Engine failure is the dramatic scenario the emotional side of us seizes on, but it’s not really the significant risk.

Crazy Bonanza Pilot

KHWO LMML

27-Oct-15 16:37

Peter’s TB20 would have run out of oil midway

This PA46 around the world pseudo charity youngster had an extra oil reservoir as part of his cabin tank installation and this piece failed and he had a power off emergency landing — luckily very close to an airport.

I was and am very concerned about possible issues due to the changes to the fuel system. Every modification bears a risk and it’s usuakly those we don’t anticipate which get us.

Good reasoning and planning, I like it. If I didn’t have kids I would follow your tracks immediately. Actually 1-1.5 weeks on a float with a charged Kindle sounds like the vacation I haven’t had in years

27-Oct-15 17:01

achimha wrote:

one would probably die for lack of water

We have the same Winslow raft and ordered it with a “Katadyn Watermaker” desalinator. It is supposed to keep you alive for a few days. However, I’m not keen on having to try it…

EDFM (Mannheim), Germany

27-Oct-15 19:28

BonanzaEric wrote:

Also, the first 3 hours were within flight distance of the Azores and the last 2 hours or so within flight distance of St. John’s, so it was only the middle 5 hours or so that were riskier. […] I landed with 6 hours of fuel in the tanks.

At 12GPH that means 3h + 5h + 2h + 6h (LFOB) = 16h * 12GPH = 192 USG fuel on board?

27-Oct-15 20:34

It wasn’t quite that much, I was running closer to 11GPH, and It was more like 5.5h left.

GAMIjectors are beautiful things.

Crazy Bonanza Pilot

KHWO LMML

90 Posts

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