Strange King Air fuel gauge problem

[Guest]

Now, before anybody accuses me of it: No, I don't have a crack problem and I don't hallucinate stuff (to my knowledge, anyhow)!Last night, I was taking a little flight from Nashville to Jackson, MS when I realized that my fuel gauge was going down in a big hurry. I could actually see it winding down. I had a nice economy cruise configuration going, but this thing was going nuts! I'd taken off with both of the main tanks full and the aux tanks about 50%. Should have been plenty of fuel for a flight of this nature.Figuring that I'd not make it to Jackson, I brought torque to 10% and made for the closest airport. I watched the fuel gauge the entire time. When the thing hit the point where I figured the engine would stop turning and I'd better pray that I was in a sparsely enough populated section of Mississippi and not where I'd slam into an autogen tree or house, the gauge did something very bizarre. It kept going. So did my engine.The gauge went all the way past 0 and kept winding counter-clockwise back to the full position and STILL kept winding down pretty quickly.Now for the questions: WHAT THE????? Has anybody seen anything like this before?Also, if I did run out of fuel, wouldn't you figure that the engine'd stop turning? I don't have "unlimited fuel" checked in my realism settings. Was there something else that I need to check to make sure that the motors don't keep turning when there's no fuel for them? I didn't find the old "Engines stop when out of fuel" checkbox in FS2002, so maybe I'm just missing it.Any help is greatly appreciated.Bill

[Guest]

Yes, I also had that problem. I don't know why it happens, but I think it's a bug in the King Air's fuel gauges, not in the fuel system. If you check your fuel settings in the fuel setup dialog, you'll see that your tanks are not yet empty, nor are they magically refilled in flight.I haven't yet had the time to find out if it's a problem with the aircraft or with the gauge, but here's how you could find out: Try to fly the King Air with a different panel that doesn't use the same fuel gauge and see if the problem disappears (or add a different gauge to the panel if you know how to tweak the panel.cfg file), or fly another aircraft that does use the King Air's fuel gauges on its panel and see if it has the same problem.Oh, and yes, your engines will stop running when you're actually out of fuel.

[Guest]

>Yes, I also had that problem. I don't know why it happens, >but I think it's a bug in the King Air's fuel gauges, not in >the fuel system. If you check your fuel settings in the fuel >setup dialog, you'll see that your tanks are not yet empty, >nor are they magically refilled in flight. The only things that I knew for sure were:I didn't have a failure in the fuel system that was generated by FSMaintenance.My fuel gauge was going bonkers.I'm somewhat relieved to know that it was neither a fuel problem nor a hallucination. I know next to nothing about editing aircraft or their config files, so I think what I'll wind up doing is finding a new panel for the King Air and using it (or just praying that when the fuel gauge is going too fast that it's actually just this little bug).>Oh, and yes, your engines will stop running when you're >actually out of fuel. I figured as much. In fact, I did run out of fuel while taxiing to the GA ramp in Denver (since the GA ramp at KDEN is actually not even in the state of Colorado, let alone in Denver) while I was on that leg of my "48 Capitals" tour.Thanks for the assist.

[Guest TerryT]

The King Air is not the only FS2002 default aircraft with weird fuel gauges. You cannot tell how much you have in the center (belly) tank on the 737. Also you cannot transfer fuel from the aft tank on the Lear to the wings as you would be able in real life. I suspect the King Air is in the same boat in that MS did not want or could not figure out how to program multiple fuel gauges/ selectors.I believe somewhere in the FARs that it states a fuel gauge is "Only" to read acurate when it is on "Empty" By the way, I can tell you from first hand experience that that is a fact. I could still hear fuel sloshing in the long thin tanks on the C-150 but it was not enough to be picked up by the tank sumps.Know how much fuel is on board at departure and what the general fuel burn is for your aircraft and how long you have been in the air. Also remember climbs burn a lot more fuel than cruise.Terry