Fuel Dumping

[Guest forcemac]

Ever wonder what it looked like when u dummped fuel...I know I always wondered....kinda anticlimatic

[ 18. April 2006, 06:24: Message edited by: Toro ]

[Mambo]

I was TDY to Singapore and our -135 had to dump right after we reached cruise altitude. I got to go back in the pit and watch. They opened up all the pumps and it was quite impressive watching all that gas coming out of that boom. Huge fuel plume.

[Guest Hydro130]

Just the dead dinos returning to the earth

Hydro

[M2]

Now THIS is dumping fuel!

Cheers! M2

[Hacker]

[Guest thebronze]

What is that first plane, is it a T-6 with its prop removed for MX?

[Flare]

Originally posted by Johann:

What is that first plane, is it a T-6 with its prop removed for MX?

Still funny!

Hacker...whats the story behind your pic?

[Guest Hoser]

Looks like an OIF loadout.

Not sure of Hacker's situation, but there were times that we tanked toward the end of our vul time, and even after flying the entire RTB at .9M, a little gross weight adjustment was sometimes necessary.

Hoser

[Guest rapier01]

Hoser, Hacker, do you guys always vent fuel from the right hand side as a rule?

[pintail21]

Somewhere green peace is having a stroke right about now. Just out of curiosity, why would you need to dump all that fuel? Was it weighing down the plane too much???

[Guest Hydro130]

Originally posted by pintail21:

Somewhere green peace is having a stroke right about now. Just out of curiosity, why would you need to dump all that fuel? Was it weighing down the plane too much???

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!!!

Exactly correct.

Hydro

EDIT: think emergency procedures... Some planes can't land at max their GTW, so they need to dump if sh!t hits the fan soon after t/o. For other planes, it's *generally* a good idea to dump down to a lighter GW dealing with an EP.

Dead dinos get dumped on a fairly regular basis, no doubt....

[ 17. April 2006, 23:37: Message edited by: Hydro130 ]

[Bergman]

Originally posted by pintail21:

Somewhere green peace is having a stroke right about now. Just out of curiosity, why would you need to dump all that fuel? Was it weighing down the plane too much???

In the -135 at least, it is possible to take off at a weight that is much higher than allowable landing weight (max TO ~322,500 for an R-model, 299,000 for an E-model; max normal landing weight 210,000 or 235,000 with a waiver).

[Guest KoolKat]

Had an example today. Inital T/O, our 2-engine ceiling was 1000'. Should that horrible situation had actually occured, dumping a little fuel would become necessary in most places on earth.

BENDY

[Hacker]

Originally posted by ENJJPT IP:

Hacker...whats the story behind your pic?

It's actually a pretty unbelievable one. Or maybe not, if you know the AF.

During the 3rd week of OIF or so, there was a major airborne gas crisis. Basically, the USAF didn't have enough tankers or time slots on the boom to service all the jets going into the container. The solution was to run USAF jets into Al Jaber for a pre-strike hot-pit refuel.

The idea was okay, but the implementation was shat. Under the original plan, F-15Es would take off from OTBH with just full internal gas but nothing in the CFTs or externals -- by the time we flew up the NAG to AJ, the gross weight of the jet would be good enough to land and take a full onload at the Jaber pits.

Unfortunately, POL at OTBH never got the message...so we took off every time with a full gas load (about 33K vs about 13K). In order to get to a suitable landing weight by the time we finished the 40 minute flight up to AJ, we had to basically dump the entire way up there once we got to altitude.

So, the photo is on a jet on the Ocean Parkway dumping to get to landing weight at Jaber.

Total f*cking waste. But I'm sure it made sense to some bean counter somewhere. I couldn't help but think of the irony of the petrol that we were putting right back in the Arabian Gulf unused.

Hey, forcemac, how about shrinking the size of that huge f*cking picture in that first post, eh?

[ 18. April 2006, 04:03: Message edited by: Hacker ]

[Guest Rainman A-10]

Originally posted by Hacker:

The solution was to run USAF jets into Al Jaber for a pre-strike hot-pit refuel.

And, not a moment too soon, to ground the F-15C.

There was a huge gas problem before the war even started.

At least you guys got to land in friendly territory and on airfields with lights and a control tower and an instrument approach and with closed circuit refuling out of a standard hose instead of "wet wing" and with USAF people filling your jets and with the engines running...

Some not so smart/safe ops going on for some folks until the Eagles became bench warmers.

"Hey Buzz, how 'bout we just ground the Eagles knock this other bullshit off? The Eagles aren't doing anything except melting our RWR, milling around overcranium to see what we're doing and yelling 'TRIPLE A OVER BAGHDAD' on GUARD everytime someone drops a bomb."

[Guest dewey405]

Reminds me of something with our bird, it was 9-11 and we had two planes up, one of em (us) was told to immediately dump to landing weight and land ASAP, we land and refuel to full bag which is ALOT!! Almost as soon as we were done refueling they told us to go up on a racetrack pattern and await further info. No sooner then we were up at altitude they told us to immediately dump fuel and land and that EXACT same base directly beneath us!!! All in all we wasted approx 120K lbs of fuel that day in one bird.

[ 18. April 2006, 06:32: Message edited by: Dewey ]

[Toro]

Originally posted by Beerman:

You can only vent fuel from the right wingtip of an Eagle....Correction...and the pylon if you've got fuel in the external tanks.

Actually, you can only dump fuel from the right wingtip mast. You can vent fuel from a number of places (at least in the E due to the CFTs).

Originally posted by pintail21:

Just out of curiosity, why would you need to dump all that fuel? Was it weighing down the plane too much???

As mentioned, it could be for an emergency. If something happened shortly after takeoff where we had to land immediately (fire), we throw the dump switch on to get to a suitable landing weight. Other times we'll dump when we just have too much fuel (configured with tanks and expected to fly a 1.5).

Originally posted by pintail21:

Somewhere green peace is having a stroke right about now.

I actually used to think that in cases where we had too much fuel and was more of a fan of the 'Burner and Boards' mentality (plugging in AB, doing a couple 360s with the speedbrake out). But somebody put it in perspective for me. They said, "The dead dinosaurs are either gonna come out the ass end of the jet or the right wingtip, but either way they're coming out of the jet."

Originally posted by Hydro130:

In the -135 at least, it is possible to take off at a weight that is much higher than allowable landing weight

KC-135s cannot dump, correct? From what I've heard, if they take off expecting to offload fuel and their receivers drop out, they're stuck airborne until they've can burn down to a landable weight via normal means. On several occasions when planned receivers fell out, I've taken more fuel than I needed to help out the tanker. About three years ago, I had a two ship night flight in a flying period with eight takeoffs where everybody was planning on taking 4K each. The first two jets got airborne and decided they weren't going to take gas, so they never showed up. The next two jets ground aborted. One of the next two jets had an emergency and both ended up landing without hitting the tanker. My wingman aborts airborne for a minor emergency so I press to the tanker knowing this dude is gonna be hosed if nobody takes gas. We ended up taking all 32K pounds of his gas - eventhough the F-15E only holds 23K internal. We had to plug in and top off, spin back out over the ocean and do a Mach run (plugged it into AB for 6-9 minutes), then turn around and hit the tanker again to top off. Once we were topped off, it was the almost the end of the flying period, so we hit the dump switch and RTB'd dumping fuel the entire way.

Genius plan.

Originally posted by Hydro130:

Gosh, we shoiuld probably pull these fuel dump pics, they seem to highlight certain capes...

Damn, you're right - nobody tell Tomcatbubba!

Originally posted by Hacker:

Hey, forcemac, how about shrinking the size of that huge f*cking picture in that first post, eh?

Done. Now if I could just get CH to shrink his photos before he posts them....

[wacky]

The -135 can definitely dump gas, however the full-court press is on everyone in AMC to conserve fuel so any dumping is now nearly prohibited. Ask Scooter about his experiences since he is a tanker guy

Wacky

[Guest Hydro130]

Toro,

Not sure about the -135, looks like you got my name mixed in with Berg's earlier qoute. But given that they can't land at max GTW, it would be bad news if they had no dump capability, no doubt about that!

Cheers, Hydro

[Bergman]

Originally posted by Toro:

KC-135s cannot dump, correct?

Not correct. We can pump it directly out of the boom whether there is a receiver or not. Two problems with this: as was previously mentioned, AMC (and other) regs require an Act of Congress to dump fuel these days (fine by me...I like flying) and when we land the crew chiefs have to drain the fuel out of the boom (normally it all gravity feeds to the receiver) so it's extra work for them.

From what I've heard, if they take off expecting to offload fuel and their receivers drop out, they're stuck airborne until they've can burn down to a landable weight via normal means.

That is correct. Since we usually aren't allowed to dump fuel, except during an EP, we will end up flying off the gas, which could potentially be 6-9 HOURS worth of flying. Typically what happens is it either CNXs our transition training because we can't do touch and gos, and/or the extra fly-off time will screw up turning the jet for the second go.

On several occasions when planned receivers fell out, I've taken more fuel than I needed to help out the tanker. About three years ago, I had a two ship night flight in a flying period with eight takeoffs where everybody was planning on taking 4K each. The first two jets got airborne and decided they weren't going to take gas, so they never showed up. The next two jets ground aborted. One of the next two jets had an emergency and both ended up landing without hitting the tanker. My wingman aborts airborne for a minor emergency so I press to the tanker knowing this dude is gonna be hosed if nobody takes gas. We ended up taking all 32K pounds of his gas - eventhough the F-15E only holds 23K internal. We had to plug in and top off, spin back out over the ocean and do a Mach run (plugged it into AB for 6-9 minutes), then turn around and hit the tanker again to top off. Once we were topped off, it was the almost the end of the flying period, so we hit the dump switch and RTB'd dumping fuel the entire way.

Genius plan.

I agree that it is ridiculous for this to happen, but as a tanker toad I definitely appreciate receivers helping us out when these things happen! Likewise, we usually try to offload what you guys need if we have the gas to give. We're all on the same team in the end.

[Guest forcemac]

We always try to take extra from a tanker operationally...whats another 5-10k when u are taking 60k already! (max tanks baby!)

[Scooter14]

The extra flying is OK sometimes, but when you get called in to give 100K to a C-17 on a scheduled 3.0 and you take off at 288,600, get up to the track around 270,000 GW and the C-17 can't take the gas (happened to me twice since Feb), it sucks. That's about 5 extra hours of flying instead of sleeping, and you probably only brought one sandwich and not enough caffiene for your 14 hour day.

Bergman, I'll give you all of those hours.

Luckily, both times that happened, there was a local C-5 flying that took 40K off our hands both days.

The C-17 broke, and a C-5 bailed us out. Twice. What is this world coming to?

[Guest twinkle toes]

https://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/01/nov01/ed111001g.html

This is how an f-16 vents fuel :D

[Guest Brewdog]

Is it really a huge deal to dump for fighters these days or is it just for the tanker guys due to the larger ammount? I remember being at Cecil in the mid 90's and everyday hornets would launch and either do burners & boards or dump fuel in order to make weight by the time they got to the OLF 10nm north to do FCLP's, come in and hot pit/crew swap launch, dump again, and that cycle continued all day/night. Supposedly it dissipates before hitting the ground but it wasn't unusual to have a nice rainbow film on the roof of your car. Swipe it with your hand and you could smell it was fuel.

[Guest Xtndr50boom]

^^ Maybe they're not dumping fuel? Maybe it's something more sinister