Overhead Scan - Hydraulics & Fuel Panel

The next panel we come to is the Hydraulics & Fuel panel. It's big but it's also really simple.


Drawing: Eric Bradley [© 2015]

The bottom row of push-buttons contains 6 buttons that control the fuel pumps and one special button in the center to select between manual and automatic modes. When that button shows the "OFF" light, it means you are in manual mode, and you normally would not want to be. Extinguish any white lights by pushing in the buttons.

Directly above the MODE SEL button, there is another special button labeled X FEED. This button is used for cross-feeding fuel between the wing tanks if an imbalance is detected. You should use cross-feed with extreme caution – at least one major crash has occurred as a result of cross-feeding fuel from a healthy wing tank to a leaking wing tank.

In the hydraulics section above that, we have buttons for controlling the hydraulic pumps, and once again the goal is to extinguish all the white lights.