Frosted fuel caps

[pelmet]

Below is a quote from a recent thread I was on. Never thought of this before. Is it really an issue in your experience?

"What I've never seen mentioned in discussions or in the books about frost, is a check to see if the fuel tank vents are open or frosted/frozen over. In some cases, this might involve removing the fuel cap and blowing air through the vent to ensure it's clear. Other systems may be more complicated to verify the vents open. A fuel starved engine will ruin your day as much as icing! An old Idaho backcountry pilot taught me this after we had to leave the plane on the ramp overnight in a snow storm, and after brushing/scraping the wings that next morning. he instructed me to remove the fuel filler caps and blow through the vent holes to make sure they were open before we took off from Elko NV a few winters ago. I've done that check ever since."

[A Regulator]

Well makes sense however you are also not to take off with frost on any critical surface unless the approved.

[digits_]

That is an interesting one. The common trainers that need vents, do seem to have multiple ones. Chances that all of them are blocked, is probably pretty slim.

I've seen a Robin 300 airplane ones that was using a wrong fuel cap, a non-vented one instead of a vented one. That engine didn't die, but the metal fuel tank got bent/imploded a bit like a coke can. A new fuel tank was required, but the fuel ran fine.

Given the fact that the fuel gets sucked in through a hose with a relatively small diameter, and the opposite side of the fuel is basically the whole wing surface, I think it will be unlikely that the engine will die due to fuel starvation directly. You would warp and create leaks in the fuel tanks first, which in the end will result in lost fuel. However, that process doesn't happen right away, which probably explains why planes aren't falling out of the sky because of it.

[rigpiggy]

Same thing happened to a pc12 that was a little more expensive"new wing"