LOU wrote on Jan 27^th, 2013 at 10:01pm:

The lack of a "good" flight engineer on the 727 is a problem, but you do have to keep an eye on the fuel & keep it in balance both in pitch and roll. If you kept all the cross feed valves opened and left all boost pumps on you would only use the fuel from the center tank and would exceed the operating limits of the 727 in having wing fuel and no center fuel. CG & Structural limits. Lou

Let me see if I understand this, as I'm still a bit confused :)  If you open the crossfeeds, the center tank goes first until its empty regardless of the pump status on 1&3? Once the fuel in the center matches the wings, you reconfigure the configuration, and each tank serves its respective engine. So some monitoring and pump juggling would be required to ensure the tanks remain even?

Is it possible that some of the wing fuel will still be used with the pumps on,  and crossfeeds all open, and that could cause an imbalance as well?

Sorry for being a pain!