In May this year, I departed on a solo flight from Wedderburn, south of Sydney, to Yarram in Victoria’s Gippsland in a two-seat light sport aircraft.
The planned route was pretty much direct to Delegate, with slight deviations to avoid the Nowra military zones and the Canberra Class C airspace. Tracking via Delegate also avoided the Designated Remote Area around the Snowy Mountains.
The weather forecast was for scattered cloud between 3,500 and 6,500 feet near the NSW coast, reducing to few further west and clear conditions in Victoria.
I did not consider this to be an issue for my flight as the planned track was a good distance from the coast, and even if the clouds were encountered, it should have been possible to get above them. I had sufficient fuel to reach the clear skies in Victoria.
Shortly after departing Wedderburn, the cloud to the south appeared to be building and was more broken than scattered.
Around Moss Vale I decided that proceeding south was not a good idea as there was no clear sky visible in the distance between the ground and the clouds. So, I headed west where the cloud forecast was less. Eventually, the cloud did lift and started to break up, but I had been pushed way off course, out past Crookwell. I was able to get above the clouds and settled on my planned altitude of 8,500. Ahead in the distance, I could see the cloud clearing.
My next task was to determine my position and what would be the best new track. Although ground fixes were intermittent, I was able to determine my position with the help of GPS and decided on a new track via Cooma.
This took me west of Canberra through Canberra Class C airspace, so I contacted ATC and obtained a clearance to Cooma. The clouds were gone now, but it had been a quite stressful hour and there was still one very important task to complete.
I had used considerably more fuel than planned due to the diversion and a 20-knot headwind and I needed to determine if I had enough fuel to complete the journey. First though, it was time to open the right tank fuel valve. My aircraft has individual fuel valves for each tank which enable you to have none on, either on or both on.
I left Wedderburn with full tanks and had flown on just the left tank. This is standard procedure when the left tank is full – it’s the return tank, so having the right tank on causes fuel to transfer to the left tank and overflow it. An hour or 2 into the flight, standard procedure is to have both valves open.
Having closed that task off, I focused on calculating the fuel required to reach Yarram. I calculated that I had enough, so long as there were no more major deviations. However, I wasn’t comfortable with that and decided to divert to Jindabyne to refuel. I checked the weather at Jindabyne and it was excellent. I had been there a few months earlier so was familiar with the strip. I was just about to contact ATC to request the course change when the engine started to sputter and lose all power.
I had inadvertently switched the left valve off instead of switching the right one on, so both fuel valves were off!
My heart sank, but the training kicked in immediately. Within a second or 2, I had completed the first 3 actions that had been practised so many times in my training – look for possible landing areas, apply carby heat, check fuel.
My aircraft does not have carby heat as it is not susceptible to carby icing; however, this can happen in certain circumstances. I considered and discarded carby icing as the circumstances were not right (too dry and not the right symptoms). Next, I looked across to check the right tank fuel valve, which is positioned at head height above the co-pilot door. To my horror, it was off! I immediately switched it to on; the engine recovered quickly and the flight returned to normal. I checked the left tank fuel valve and it was also off!
I had inadvertently switched the left valve off instead of switching the right one on, so both fuel valves were off! I hear you thinking that surely, I would have realised it straight away. But in my aircraft, there are about 2 litres of fuel in the lines downstream of the valves, so the engine will run for about 6 minutes with both fuel valves closed. In those 6 minutes, my mind had closed off the task as completed and moved on to recalculating the ongoing fuel requirements and checking the weather at Jindabyne.
Just a few weeks before this incident, I had attended a seminar where a CASA Aviation Safety Advisor discussed carby icing and fuel starvation, as there had been a recent spate of similar incidents leading to forced landings. This was fresh on my mind and I believe the seminar contributed to me not becoming another statistic.
Lessons learnt
- Recalculate fuel after every diversion and adjust for headwinds.
- Do one task at a time and double-check the correct control is set.
- Keep emergency drills current so your response is automatic.
- Choose and brief an alternate early and tell ATC before it becomes urgent.
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Close calls are contributed by readers like you. They are personal accounts of individual experiences and are not corroborated by CASA. We publish close calls so others can learn from their stories and spark discussions about safety. These stories should not be used to identify individuals or operators.
