tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26744483.post9059649521439023130..comments2023-12-30T19:42:59.088-08:00Comments on Adventures in Fuel Economy, Energy Use, Physics, and Life: PA32R-301TKing of the Roadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06841601144107400103noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26744483.post-88335294009370952802010-04-05T10:23:17.937-07:002010-04-05T10:23:17.937-07:00A very interesting point. To briefly investigate, ...A very interesting point. To briefly investigate, I took my most common lengthy trip, from Southern California to my brother's house in Colorado Springs. Door to door in my car, the trip is 1159 statute miles and, on average, I'd use about 55.2 gallons of auto gas.<br /><br />For the airplane, I drive from my house to the hangar and my brother drives me from the airport to his house. This is about 52 miles total and about 2.3 gallons of auto gas.<br /><br />The airplane, using low altitude airways (I fly IFR and direct routings are difficult in the west due to restricted airspace and military operations areas) the flight is 741 nautical miles (853 statue miles) and will use about 67 gallons of avgas plus about 3 gallons to start, warm up, taxi out and taxi in, run up, etc.. So the total for the trip is 72.3 gallons.<br /><br />Since it's really door to door that I'm concerned about, I'll use that distance and the airplane trip achieves an equivalent of (1159/72.3) or 16.0 miles per gallon. As you stated, that's not too far off of 1.6 times 10.King of the Roadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06841601144107400103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26744483.post-7241080667483560222010-04-05T05:03:45.736-07:002010-04-05T05:03:45.736-07:00The fact that you can often go in pretty much a st...The fact that you can often go in pretty much a straight line from A to B counts for a lot though. A good rule of thumb is that the distance by air in kilometres is the distance by road in miles because of the way that the roads wiggle around.<br /><br />E.g., it's a gliding silver distance (50 km) from my local airfield (Booker, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England) to Lasham (Hampshire) but 50 miles from one to the other by road.<br /><br />Except in cases where there happens to be a direct motorway between the two points this works pretty well. I guess that in the US mid-west or other areas with roads laid out on a grid this effect would be smaller, varying from a factor of 1 when going north-south or east-west to 1.414 (root 2) when going diagonally.<br /><br />Still, on average, you can multiply aeroplane m.p.g by 1.6 to get the value to compare with cars.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com