D-180 Inaccurate Capacitive Fuel Levels

[melkel2000]

Hello:

I've been flying with this issue since my first flight in 2012 and I was wondering if there has been any resolution to this.

I have calibrated several times and each time I get the "there was no change in the voltage reading" warning. This is due to the very small change the Dynon sees during calibration.

As a result, my fuel gauges on the D-180 are accurate towards full but are significantly off near empty. They indicate that I have a couple of gallons more fuel than I really have. Not a good thing.

I finally got tired of re-calibrating the tanks and have accepted the issue. However, it's very disappointing that the reason I went with the capacitive set up is for improved accuracy. I would have been better off installing floats.

I bought the converters from Dynon years ago and the capacitive plates in the tank from Vans. I'm flying an RV-9A.

Has there been any solution to this issue?

 

[Raymo]

Mine is similar but mostly because, when I did the calibration, I was not expecting the "no or little change" warning, so I did not hit the button to move on and did another pour.

Since then, I have improved things by checking the value for each tank prior to refueling and adjusting the calibration little by little.

If you are using different types of fuel, the capacitive senders will only be accurate for one type of fuel, due to density changes.

 

[cjohngraham]

I have a similar issue with a RV-7A and HDX and capacitive senders. For several flights after calibration, the fuel gauges gave reasonable readings before and after a flight, within a gallon or two of what was in each tank. Now, the readings will slowly come up to a fairly accurate level after fuel is added, but thereafter only go down a gallon despite several gallons being used from a tank. We're in Phase 1 with about 17 tach hours. Hopefully there is a way to achieve better accuracy.