Departing Brazilia

Tuesday, May 12, 2010

What a day; absolutely unbelievable and exhausting. We finally made it to our destination, but what should have been a 40 minute trip turned into a day’s work. Arriving at our planes at the private airport where we’d landed 5 day earlier both planes were looking good, side by side, just a little wet from the rain.

I gassed up first as Wayne was packing the plane with all our stuff. I pulled out of the way, so that Wayne could gas up and checked the plane over. I started to sump the fuel and got three cupfuls of dirty water. I showed the third to Gerard, our host. He was astounded and showed the airport manager. They’d just been refueled and were happy to have avgas available again. There were also bits from the bottom of what appeared to be a rusty tank. This was NOT a good situation. I drained over 30 cupfuls before getting any avgas at all and it was still contaminated.

We moved the Mooney into a hangar and spent the next four hours draining and cleaning out the tanks. We took off the gasculator and made sure the screen was clean. We cleaned out all the water and spent a long time rocking the wings and sumping, rocking the wings and sumping. We finally got it down to a very low level of dirt in the bottom, practically nothing, but always a little in the first sump after rocking the wings. But this was at the lowest level, nothing was getting to the engine. We checked what was coming through the fuel filter and it was all clean avgas.

I ran up the engine on each tank for five minutes and high rpm. Then I took off and did several turns around the airport in both directions. I sumped again on landing and still, there was only a very small amount in each drain. We finally decided that this was ok. I called my A&P, IA, and close friend, Arthur, and he confirmed that we had taken the correct steps. He recommended watching the fuel pressure and cleaning the fuel filter in the engine if we had any indication that the contaminated gas had made it that far.

Flemming was coming with me on this leg and another earthrounder, Claude, was traveling with Wayne. We finally departed for a 30 minute trip to get new avgas, then a 40 minute flight to our destination. All went well. We are here and absolutely exhausted. It was a flight over beautiful terrain and no-one took any pictures. We’ll get some tomorrow. Right now, at 7pm, it’s time for bed.