My Aux. Tanks

I did not make the tanks although all of the installation, plumbing and instrumentation work is mine. They add 17 gallons (8.5 each tank) and I get roughly 0.7 hours out of each one at 10 gal/hr burn rate which is well over another hour of flying time. My wife and I flew back from LOE non-stop in just over 4 hours. With unusable fuel we should still have over 5 hours flying time at 75% power. I have had no contact with the manufacturer since I picked them up in November of 1996. All I have is an address from the invoice and I do not know if the tanks are still being manufactured. The address is:

"Bladder Buster Tanks"
Reed Mfg.
315 Lathrop Lane
Grants Pass, Oregon 97526

I am very pleased with them but they add complexity to the build and operations. I discovered I had a very slow seeping leak through the trailing edge when I filled them to calibrate the fuel gauges. I fixed the leak with fiberglass. Some people plumb the tips into the mains but I chose to have all four tanks individually selectable. Takeoffs with partially filled tip tanks in this configuration must not be made on one of these tip tanks - the engine will start sucking air as you go to a high angle of attack and the fuel moves to the back of the tip tanks. Here is a photo taken during assembly to the wing on November 20 1997:

Question, are they fiberglass or metal?

Bob: Did you or the tank manufacturer do any engineering to evaluate the effect of the increased span on wing spar bending moments? Just curious. I seem to recall reading that small increases in span cause a disproportionately large increase in bending moments. Maybe one of the engineers (George, are you there?) can comment for us non-engineers. BTW, this weekend I visited with an Australian fellow who is building a 7 with tanks in the outboard leading edge. An additional set of tank skins replaces his leading edge skins. He is also installing tip tanks. He figures he will have 102 gallons of fuel. He is building his airplane here in the states and plans to fly it home to Australia. Steve

No I did not

I saw mention of the tanks in an old RVator and ordered them from Farn Reed at approximately the same time as I ordered the kit. We flew to Portland in November of 1996, rented a 24ft Budget truck, paid for the kit at the old North Plains facility, had them load it on the truck and picked up the aluminum tanks at Grants Pass as we drove south to Orange county below LA. In the photo you can see the three major steel studs that extend through the tanks but the holes have not been drilled and dimpled for all of the wing skin attachment screws. There is a metal conduit through the tank as part of the standard tank configuration and I routed my nav/strobe/landing light wires through there. I did not do any structural analysis on the tanks/wings I knew that the fellow in Canada that put floats on his RV-6 had a pair as well as Farn Reed so I was not concerned that they were going to fail. I wanted the extra fuel badly and I was not interested in trying to convence myself that there was a significant margin of safety with the tanks installed. I have flown in excess of the low 180ish red line with them in place but it is an experiment. The analysis should not be difficult but I have no interest in doing it. The leading edge tanks sound like the best way to go. Jon Johanson's tip tanks (his book "Aiming High" is on my book shelf along side Charles A. Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis") that replace the kit tips and do not extend the wing are another very good option. These tanks I got from Farn Reed are (or at least were) another good option. If the changes to the fuel system do not increase the usable fuel to a total in excess of 50 gallons, I do not believe they are worth the effort - the effort is significant. One forum reader asked for information on mine so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Bob Axsom

New Contact Info.

Does anyone have updated contact information for these extended range tanks MFG. I have tried the Grans Pass info & written letters.

Thx