Learn to Fly - Fuel check for pilot training

On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Rodney Fielitz, I'm a certified flight instructor in Cottonwood, Arizona. I'm here to give you the basics on what it takes to become a pilot. Underneath the airplane wing there's a fuel drain underneath here. Check the fuel to make sure there's no water. It does show a few particles of stuff floating around in there and that comes from the floatend side is made out of material that does deteriorate once in a while. If you notice the color, the color of the fuel is kind of blue, that tells me it's 100 low lead. If it was red, it was only 80 octane. This airplane only runs on 100 octane. Now that I've drained it again there's no more stuff floating around in there so that's what I'm after. Make sure there's nothing in there. Underneath here you have a tie down you're also looking at your tires. You have a safety pin, codger pin in there, make sure that's on. It's got fresh grease there because this just had a $100 inspection not too long ago. Back in here I check for the strut make sure the strut is up high enough. I check the tires for cracks, wear spots. The breaks, any fluid draining. I also look at the underside, there's inspection panels, make sure they're all on; all the screws are in there. I don't see anything hanging that shouldn't be hanging. Up here there's not a lot that we can look at up here without tearing the airplane really far apart. But we don't need to look at anything. But in here is our oil and we want to check our oil. The capacity of this airplane is eight. The oil is just a little bit below eight quart, we're fine. I put it in there and I snug it back up. If you haven't flown it for a while you want to look in there for bird nest or anything like that.