Oh yeah. Very intersting. Typically inaccurate, but very interesting. Of special interest, were the following quotes:
Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at St. Louis University, said it only takes an eighth of an inch of ice on the wing's leading edge to disrupt the flow of air, which can cause the wing to lose its lift and the plane to dive.
Sounds a lot like a tailplane stall, but gotta watch out for that eighth inch of ice making an airplane dive intot he ground. That's scary stuff.
"Ice can cover half a wing in 2 seconds when a plane flies through very cold, damp air like the kind Wellstone's plane encountered, Czysz said. "
True, but it's the little alien creatures that come out of the ice after millenia of hiding in underground caverns, to take over the world, that's the real concern. Half a wing? Would that be freezing fog, building to cover half the wing...running rime ice, running amok and covering half a wing. Professor Czysz is quite an expert.
"Investigators say Wellstone's plane made an abrupt right turn as it made its runway approach. Czysz said that indicates one wing probably had ice on it, causing the sudden movement. "
That's the same agressive ice that covered half the wing. It attacked, not only knowing just how much to cover and how to do it, but just attacked one wing. Half of one wing. That would be a quarter wing, in toto, I guess.
"The weather may have contributed to the accident, causing the pilot to fly at a slow speed that wasn't safe, Czysz said."
Old Czysz is quite the master of understatement, coupled with a penchant for the stupid. Weather may have contributed. Well, duh. In much the same manner that flight may have contributed, or the fact that the airplanes had wings on which to accumulate ice. Imagine weather contributing to a weather related accident. Shocking.
"It was a gray, misty day," Czysz said. "When you fly in visually degraded conditions, it's really tough to know how fast you're going and how you're oriented."
That's one of the first things to go in visually degraded conditions, you know. The ability to know how fast you're going. The instruments get all blurry, especially the airspeed indicator. Fog hypoxia sets in, with the cold air that's freezing up half the wing depriving the brain, particularly the occular center, of the ability to see and interpret airspeed indications. This also happens when one eats a frozen popsicle too fast.
My kingdom for accurate reporting. My kingdom is safe. There is no accurate reporting. (My kingdom also isn't worth anything, which also probably makes it safe). My kingdom is a POS.
