Chuck taking a fuel sample
Ah, the great wisdoms one can impart on little kids! Sometimes it makes you feel smart, because you know so much more about the world, but more often than not they can bring you to the point of despair and frustration, because you start out answering a simple question (“How does the water know to flow into the drain?”), and then the follow up series of “why”s lead you towards trying to explain gravity and dark matter. I think there’s a Louis CK bit about that.
Anyway, today’s strip reminded me of some manly wisdom I recently tried to pass on to my son, about how to check the direction of the wind before peeing somewhere outside. We’re still working on that concept though. Once we mastered that, we’ll move to the next level of not dropping your pants all the way down to the ankles, but one step at a time!
You might want to cover not smoking or using a camping lantern while taking a fuel sample, too. That can go really bad, really fast.
It is most important Not to make any other steps between dropping your trousers to you ankles and peeing down wind!
Peeing and taking a fuel sample. A topic that can be combined into one: when taking a sample be sure to observe accuracy of flow and the limit of the container.
Taking the sample is easy and clean (except for Chuck). Flushing the tank, for weighting the aircraft for instance – a typical task for julio – is much more messy. First, when you remove the drain, gas starts spilling on your hands and as they are up, gas pours all the way down your fist and arms. Not to mention that of course the tank is always almost full when you do that, so it takes several cans to empty it, and another liter of spilled gas when swapping. Then when the tank is almost dry, the gas stops pouring straight and goes all possible ways underwing instead of the can. And it takes ages to dry….then you figure out you left gas open on “both”, so the other tank slowly pours into the one you’re flushing (and that explains why it took more than usual ages to dry….)