I believe you're referring to FAR 91.13, which is Careless OR Reckless
Operation, not careless AND reckless. I own the aircraft and fly it solo,
how does flying it into known icing conditions endanger the life or property
of another?


You are right - careless OR reckless. No matter. It's not legal. It's
usually not smart.

If you have an aircraft that is not certificated for flight into known icing
(say, a typical spam can), even if it is older than the regs, doing so puts it
at the very real risk of acquiring ice on the airframe. An iced up airplane
does not fly very well. It is less stable, has less lift, more drag, less
power (as the prop and intake get iced), and more weight. Your instruments will
be less reliable, and may fail (i.e. the static port gets iced) If the tail
ices up faster than the wing, you can get into a tail stall, which feels simlar
to a wing stall but whose recovery is the opposite.

What's more, unlike say for turbulence, cloud, or an unusual attitude, exiting
the icing conditions does not fix things. The ice that you have picked up
doesn't just "go away" right away, especially if it's still cold out.
Sublimation is very slow, and you have to get into fairly warm temps to melt
the stuff. You can't count on that.

One of the big problems occurs on landing iced up... the trim (if it still
works) and configuration changes may destabilize the aircraft even if it seemed
to be flying "just fine" before.

Further, once you're in it, you might not be able to get out. It might be that
conditions are closing all over. So, you might not end up with "just a peek"
but rather, a whole lot of dunk.

Certification for known ice includes more than just boots. There's a whole lot
of redundancy involved, and significant excess power needed in the powerplant
to overcome the effects of ice.

This is part of the reason why it's not safe. It endangers people and property
below you, far more than simply flying. Because of this, the FAA would
consider it careless. It would also consider it reckless. The FAA has already
said that "forecast" icing conditions count as "known" icing conditions, even
in the face of pireps to the contrary.

Jose

--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)