Michael wrote:

ospam (Rosspilot) wrote

So what are you saying? A plane flying in clouds has to be high-performance
to be safe? What?


A plane flying in clouds at subfreezing temperatures DOES have to be
high performance to be reasonably safe. A low performance airplane
will fall out of the sky too quickly when the ice starts building.

Well, I found out one evening flying past Lake Erie that a Skylane will
carry at least an inch of ice on the leading edge and struts and still
fly very well ... just a little bit on the slow side. :-)

It didn't "fall out of the sky", but I did have to descend from 11,000
to 9,000 before I could hold altitude with full throttle and the carb
heat on (the air intake froze over almost immediately upon the ice
encounter).


Matt