first flight/ride in icing!!

[vetteracer]

What were the tops?

 

[apcooper]

Based on what I've posted should my pucker factor have been higher? My PF was noticable but still well under control. On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being a clear VFR day and 10 being flying into the teeth of a supercell, I was at about a 2.

 

[apcooper]

I'm not sure what the tops were but the temp was above freezing between 4000 and 9000. We were in stratus layer and were several hundred miles ahead of a warm front. As the flight progressed an undercast slowly formed followed by solid IMC. I watched the OAT like a hawk and it was still well above freezing. Listening to Worcesters ATIS I found out it was only 1 C at the surface and 6 C flying at 6000. Then it started raining and I was concerned that the more we descended we would pick up ice. It was right at freezing on the ground at Gardner. The OAT changed from +6 to -4 in just a few hundred feet during the descent!! I'm amazed we didn't pick up loads of ice!

 

[Immelman]

My first & only exp with ice was in a C172 doing my inst rating in Oregon. The Cascades are known to be no fun for icing. Throughout my inst training my CFI and I had to try hard to find actual IMC that wasn't dangerous (too much ice or TS), so one day things looked to be just right and we set out: 4000 OVC with the freezing level at about 2000 agl (6000). Our home airport was just over 4000 msl and we filed to take a short hop (50nm) flight over to the next town to shoot an approach, hopefully getting us some brief-yet-safe exposure to ice to give me a taste for it... I should mention that the MEA along the route was 9000 as it was mountainous terrain.

So we climb up and get ourselves into the clouds. Within a few minutes there is a very light layer of rime on the wings and quite literally, within 3-5 minutes, I am at Vy full-power to maintain our 9000-ft MEA. Now before you freak out we could descend into VMC and still have good obstacle clearance - but it was definately an eye opener.

We were able to continue IFR, now only occasional IMC as the layer turned to bkn/sct and descended to the (much lower, ~1k MSL) destination where the ice went on the approach. On the return trip we repeated the experiment and when I got the airplane back in the hangar (this time at the higher airport where nothing broke off during the approach) I collected the ice just for kicks: it was 1/4"-1/3" thick at most over the leading edges and filled a 3-gallon bucket about halfway (this for the entire airplane). That was ALL it took to make that little 172 go right to the edge in terms of safety. A lesson I was very glad to learn and a valuable... actually I would say mandatory if I were a CFII... experience for any instrument student to go through.

 

[flyer172r]

A lesson I was very glad to learn and a valuable... actually I would say mandatory if I were a CFII... experience for any instrument student to go through.

While I agree that it would be good for all instrument students to have an experience like that, I also think that if it were mandatory, it could possibly lead to a bunch of ice-related accidents if conditions (or your luck) were just a little bit worse than they were on the day you described.

 

[Immelman]

Sorry, I see your point... can make the same argument about mandatory spin training I suppose. Perhaps just making the student fly around with no more than 50-55% power & trying to climb clear of the icing would drive the point home in a safe way. Nothing like experiencing it first hand though to teach you to stay the heck out of it unless you're properly equipped.

 

[Sctt@NJA]

The reason I wouldnt turn around if I was picking up ice 5 miles from landing is because I wouldn't want to turn around only to find I was still in ice and now further from landing.

I have flown VFR into worsening weather only to think "I can turn around if I need to" only to find the weather behind has turned bad too.

If you had just popped out of clear and a million, sure turn around and go back to that. But if you went from junky IMC with no ice to junky IMC with ice I wouldn't pin all my hopes on the ice not being where it wasn't before. Weather changes not just over distance but also over time. Bad weather doesn't always come in from somewhere else. Sometimes it starts right where you are.

 

[vetteracer]

Could you have just stayed at 4K or 6K and stayed ice free? Then on the approach start down?


Mark

 

[avbug]

acooper,

You admire your instructor because he's managed to write a few hours in his logbook. Apparently he spent more time writing than gaining judgement. A Cessna 172 is not approved for flight into known icing, period. 10,000 hours isn't worth much more than the last hour flown, and that one apparently includes some very unwise judgement, from your post. Hardly something worth admiration.

Known ice occurs any time that conditions exist that might produce ice, or any time it is reported or forecast.

Putting a Cessna 172 of all things into conditions conducive to the formation of ice, especially freezing rain, is stupid. Very, very stupid.

Your instructor had no business continuing the approach with ice on the airplane; he should have landed. Period. You suggested that the ice was 'only accumulating slowly,' which suggests that it's okay to go flying in ice. Not so. You don't have much performance margin to begin with in the 172, and no available excess power to speak of. You have an airframe with the aerodynamic efficiency of a pickup truck. Adding ice can do nothing but hurt, and certainly not help.

What happens when you have that ice you can't shed, but need to land, and have to go around? You're fine leven and then on the descent, but what about the climb? Bad time to find out, isn't it?

If you accumulate ice faster, if the rate of accumulation increases or the amount of freezing rain increases, does being five miles from the airport make you less dead than say 10 miles from the airport?

Flying a Cessna 172 in ice is a risk taking operation. Flying in clouds in the winter is flying in ice, period. Ice can form, and apparently, it did. Your instructor has no business taking that airplane into the ice or the clouds in that area this time of year.

You're right; no forecaster could have predicted the intensity of the freezing rain, and neither could your instructor. But that aside, he had no business going in the cloud in the first place, or taking a student there. Not only were his actions rash and stupid, but he set a very poor example for both the students on board. Hours mean nothing; don't frame admiration for someone because they claim more ink than you in their logbook. A lot of pilots out there are still alive at this point in their careers due to luck, rather than good judgment and skill. The judgement this pilot has used speaks volumes. I certainly wouldn't fly with him or her, and you probably shouldn't, either.

 

[apcooper]

What exactly would you have done in this situation? He certainly got a weather briefing before the flight. Since this occured 3 hrs after we departed on the first leg the forecast probably changed somewhat. Since Worcester was reporting 4000 OVC w/no precip and a temp of +1C it would have been difficult to know that just 20mi NW near Gardner there would be -FZRA since GDM had no weather reporting. I guess it would have been best to climb back up to 6000 in warm air as soon as it was below freezing and raining and make a retreat to Worcester and stay at that alt until shooting the app into ORH. That way there wouldn't have been any ice. I also think my instructor should have checked the weather at ORH before departing back to HFD to re-assess the situation. As we headed back from Gardner to Hartford there was a VFR 172 recieving advisories that seemed to be caught in the frozen precip. BDL app helped him avoid it by their radar display. He described it in much the same way as what We'd been through. Unfortunately I don't think we could have had the luxury of knowing exactly where the precip was since we were talking to Bos Center and therefore had very limited radar coverage to begin with.