Refueling Unit

After I got back from RotorWay's Phase 1 training

and I finally got set up in our local airport with our helicopter the time we'd waited for for so long had finally came.

We hauled four 5 gallon cans of fuel and our trusty ladder out to the ship. We pulled both fuel caps off dumped one of the cans of fuel into the pilots side of the ship and attempted the same thing on the passengers side.

After pouring about 2 gallons if fuel into the fuel tank the fuel funnel we were using backed up and by the time I got the can tipped back down the funnel was still full and the fuel was running out where the funnel spout met the neck of the tank inlet.

There wasn't a thing we could do as we watched the fuel run out all over the inside of the ship

from the top of the tanks to the bottom of the tub, its wasn't pretty at all lol. When it finally stopped we discovered that a friend that was helping us was on the other side of the ship and had replaced the fuel cap causing the tanks not to have a vent.

This is all conjecture of course but were pretty sure that's is what happened.

 
The fuel had run down the tanks into the bottom of the tub and through the rear access panel onto the battery access panel. What a nightmare that was. It was everywhere from the top down and what was only about 2 quarts seemed like 2 gallons and there was no way for it to run out of the bottom of the tub.

We couldn't tip the ship back to drain it because of the brace at the rear of the tub and there weren't any drain holes in the front to let it escape so we had to remove the cyclic covers to see where it was puddling and drill a hole though the tub to let it escape. The ship was hot, power wise, and even the slightest spark would have probably blown us and the ship up. We used a screw driver to make the hole in the bottom of the tub to allow all the fuel to drain out and began the really fun part of cleaning the mess up. That took us the entire day not to mention about every last nerve we had.

We knew we wern't going to have that happen to us again
so we made this nifty little fuel cart. The parts came from all over. The 3/4 ton rated wagon came from Northern Hydraulics. The tank itself came from Tractor Supply.

The fuel pump from a local service station equipment supply house.

The box from Sam's Wholesale Club.

Inside the box there's a 1000 hour cranking amp 12 Volt DC bettery

accompanied by a marine battery switch to turn the master power on and off I had left over from my boating days.

In the event of the battery going dead we can turn the switch to an auxiliary position and obtain power from a trailer plug connector we installed with it pluged into a tow vehicle.

We also have a port that we use to hook up a battery maintainer to keep the battery charged.

Even though it may not make a difference it has 2 grounding wires

one for grounding the cart to the ground and the 2nd one is for grounding the unit to the helicopter while were fueling.

A few people tell me that since were filling into plastic tanks
grounding to the ship and the ground isn't doing us much good but we figure its better then nothing so we do it anyway lol.

END