Comments on: Ice Education http://blog.aopa.org/leadingedge/?p=3126 A place to discuss safety-of-flight issues, procedures, techniques, and judgment. Sat, 18 May 2013 13:52:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Jim McNeill http://blog.aopa.org/leadingedge/?p=3126&cpage=1#comment-56512 Jim McNeill Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:30:33 +0000 http://blog.aopa.org/leadingedge/?p=3126#comment-56512 Over a 50 year career I frequently encountered ice, and the encounters are always a big deal, not matter the equipment I was flying.

I was scarred early on by a September SLD encounter in FIKI-equipped Army U-3, before anybody knew what SLD was. That day I learned that icing exists in what appeared to be innocuous clouds on a day when nobody was forecasting ice, and that ice can take down any aircraft, no matter how well equipped. If the clouds hadn’t had a high base with temperatures above freezing in the valleys I wouldn’t be here today.

For the rest of my career I worked really, really hard to avoid ice, flying through it but never in it for any period of time. Later on, the Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS) icing forecasts were great for picking routes and altitudes which minimized icing encounters.

]]> By: John Fuller http://blog.aopa.org/leadingedge/?p=3126&cpage=1#comment-56506 John Fuller Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:18:25 +0000 http://blog.aopa.org/leadingedge/?p=3126#comment-56506 It was the summer of 1982 and four of us were flying my deiced non-turbo Aztec to Europe over the Greenland icecap at 13,000′ in good weather. Only we found ourselves in a layer, out of VFR coverage (save with airliners above), slowly accumulating rime above a 9,000′ icecap. As the speed decayed toward best ROC while we held altitude, I thought of our limited options if we were forced to descend.

The decreased performance was surprising given the small amount of rime (1/4″) and the fat Aztec wing. Cycling the boots shed some of it but my respect for what minimal ice can do to performance took a healthy jump that day.

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