On Dec 4, 4:03 pm, Peter Clark
wrote:
On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 14:35:48 +0000 (UTC), Dylan Smith

wrote:
On 2007-12-02, wrote:
On Dec 2, 2:30 pm, "Blueskies" wrote:

The airplane is NOT approved for flight into *known* icing conditions. So when a pilot finds himself in those conditions
in one of these planes, Cessna is to blame if he/she screws up and crashes...

So, why do so many of them have boots and hot props and all
the rest? It would seem to add a lot of expensive weight if flight
through known ice is forbidden.

It's there to give you more time to escape icing conditions, not so you
can simply fly in known icing conditions.

So all the information on flight into known icing and the related
procedures and required equipment, as documented in the POH and TCDS,
which do not contain language to the effect that "Must use this
equipment to run away as soon as any ice shows up", is wrong?

We're not talking about a SR22 with weeping wing here (I don't think
any of them are known-ice certified, but some do have inadvertant
encounter escape systems, and language to the effect of "Must use this
equipment to run away as soon as any ice shows up.")

If the Caravan is certified for known ice, then it's
certified. Transport Canada's document alerts the pilot to the changes
required by the AD (which is, in turn, requested by Cessna and
mandated by the FAA). The placard warns the pilot to get clear of ice,
and it's probably a CYA thing to protect Cessna. Many airplanes will
accumulate ice fast enough to get into trouble pretty quick, de/anti-
ice or not, and should get clear ASAP usually by climbing or
descending to get out of cloud, or to get into cloud that's either
above freezing or below the supercooled point (around -20°C). It's not
an inadvertent escape system; such systems are not "certified for
known ice" systems. If bozos keep killing themselves in the Caravan,
Cessna will likely get the known-ice certification suspended or will
get the FAA to require further training to legally fly it. There's
also various levels of icing risk, and the pilot needs to avoid the
worst of it.

Maybe we should consult the Caravan pilots themselves,
since they're the ones who do this all the time. See:

http://www.caravanpilots.com/phpBB3/....php?f=1&t=460

Their opinion seems to be, almost universally, that
pilots are poorly trained and don't know how to handle ice and when to
get out of it. Very similar to my opinion that carburetor ice and its
management is very poorly understood; otherwise, why would so many
perfectly good airplanes, with functioning carb heat systems, quit
with their carbs all clogged up and fall from the sky, every one of
them happening when carb ice risk was elevated (temp/dewpoint spread
too small)? How many pilots *really* check out the atmosphere to see
what it's up to before they dive into it? Ignorance will kill you
dead.
Recently, not far from here, a commercial student, no less, had
his carb ice up and he let it happen, and he ended up inverted in a
creek, in fairly remote mountains, in early winter. One of our guys
heard him going down and found him and directed a helicopter to him
before the hypothermia got him.

Dan