Oops. Last one got away early.

On 1/3/2006 8:06 PM, A Lieberman wrote the following:

On 3 Jan 2006 17:49:13 -0800, Robert M. Gary wrote:


(snip)


Not necessarily. On my only encounter with icing where I
was skimming the
tops of the clouds of a stratus deck, I picked up trace
icing and noticed
where I had to sneak in some power.


Skimming the cloud tops in icing conditions is a known Bad
Place To Be. I request higher automatically without waiting
to see the ice. Higher is less bumpy too.

(snip)
If frost on wings will affect the performance on a plane,
surely flying
with trace icing will do the same thing?


Actually no. Frost screws up the boundary layer air flow
while icing affects the shape of the leading edge. I don't
have first hand experience with frost but everything I've
read leads me to conclude that it is much worse than a
little (1/2-3/4") ice on the leading edges. And I have
landed with that on Cherokee/Arrow class airplanes. Not
that either is recommended ...