Temperatures and Icing

[AndyFromCB]

As winter is slowly settling down, I had the very unpleasant experience to pick up about 1" of ice during a flight from Paris to Geneva 2 weeks ago. That already happened to me 18 months ago (see post above) but I can hardly get used to it... 15 kts speed loss and high ground ask for some sort of rapid solution !

I had the pleasure to meet Margrit Waltz 2 years ago in Greenland as I was returning from Kerrville. She is a very famous ferry pilot with a world record of +700 transatlantic crossing, a vast majority of them on Mooneys as she has been ferry pilot for the company for many years.

As I was wondering how she managed to cope with icing conditions during all these years, I started to search the web hoping to get some kind of advice from her huge experience. I found this article that I wanted to share with you to get some feedback:

http://www.mooneyevents.com/waltz.html

'When asked about a Mooney’s performance in the icing conditions common to the North Atlantic from September to May, Waltz said that there is a speed drop when the first inch of ice goes on the wing -- but that the Mooney speeds up again as the ice progresses further on the aircraft profile. She presumes that it is because the laminar airflow is restored on the Mooney and noted that the speed resumption does not occur on thicker wings like the Baron or Bonanza.'

As anybody ever experienced that ?

Cheers,

Philippe

I'm not quite sure I'd place my bet on speed resumption as more ice builds up. Maybe it happens, maybe not depending on how the ice builds but I'd rather have TKS. An inch of ice is about what I've ever had on a Arrow or a 172 and while I didn't exactly feel like I was falling out of the sky, it was not a pleasant experience, especially in the 172. Never had any ice on the Mooney because TKS works so damn well and I seem to have gotten brighter about that stuff as I got older.

Andy