Iced up Cirrus crashes

"Peter R." wrote:

As long as the system is maintained and the Glycol reservoir filled,
a pilot of a low-wing, retractable gear aircraft won't even know if the
aircraft is picking up ice when the system is on.

Sorry, my bad: I should have typed, "... the pilot of a low-wing,
retractable gear aircraft won't even realize the aircraft is in icing
conditions with the system running because the aircraft will be completely
free of ice."

Fire the editor...

--
Peter













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I might be getting here a bit late, but the reason that the SR71 was
painted black (and called the Black Bird) was because it needed to
radiate the maximum it could on the ground to get rid of the heat of
flying at Mach 3+.

The plane would actually glow red at altitude.

BTW - according to my sources, and now that the sucker is retired (even
though many things about it are still classified), they did try
different paint schemes, and black was the one that allowed them to get
rid of heat the fastest!

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

Would you say they (Cirrus) have become the new "doctor/lawyer killer"?

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

Jon:

Who granted your "engineer" status? I certainly hope it wasn't the NJ
Cosmatology Board.

There are no Software Engineers that I'm aware of, only a title for a
position, but no engineers. This is a legal thing, and why I ask,
because I also do software and have for years.

I decided to let the bugs in the software argument go lest I be called
a mainframe bigot.

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

"John Harper" wrote in
message ...


Mike Rapoport wrote:

There is nothing wrong with Cirrus' deicing system. A TKS type sytem is
pretty much immune from being overwhelmed by icing because the fluid runs
back and protects the entire wing.

Mike
MU-2


But surely in this case it MUST have been overwhelmed, otherwise why
would he have crashed?

I was thinking of getting the TKS system on my 182 once it is
certificated, but this has pretty much put me off.

John


Lots of airplane crash without any ice. The TKS system CAN'T be
overwhelmed. The fluid forms a layer that doesn't stick to either the
airplane or the ice. Makes one wonder if there was any fluid in the system
when he took off.

Mike
MU-2

This sounds like a troll post, but I will respond...

No, I wouldn't. I am a reasonably low time, 215 hour-ish (f/w)
instrument rated PP, and I find the SR20 to be a pretty easy airplane to
fly, given my limited experience with sub-200hp airplanes. Having just
done an hour in a high performance Mooney 231 yesterday (with no
previous logged high-perf time), I can opine that a "simplistic"
airplane such as the SR20 is a LOT easier to manage than the 231, which
is at least roughly comparable performance-wise to the V-Bonanza that
got the reputation you mention.

IMO (as others have said) the Cirrus is getting more negative press than
it deserves due to its "different-ness" as compared to more traditional
light airplanes. It was certificated under different rules than the 2oth
century Cessnas/Pipers/etc. and it will take some time for folks to come
around to this new way of thinking about what's safe.

The bottom line is - if I was going to buy an airplane, I'd look much
more enthusiastically at mid-timed Cirri than equivalent late-model
Cessnas (Pipers are not even on my scope due to the single door).

However, my pennies are being saved for something with a rotor 8^) .

Dave Blevins

On 11 Feb 2005 19:02:49 -0800, "Steve.T" wrote:

Would you say they (Cirrus) have become the new "doctor/lawyer killer"?

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

Steve,

I was just joking about the "engineer" part so (hense the quotes)...
Sorry for the confusion... Since you are just a mainframe programmer I
should have spelled it out better.... (another joke) My bad!! I
thought the software bug comments were very accurate..

I workied on the mainframe for years... They suck!! Tandem is the way
to go....

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Mooney 201 4443H

Steve.T wrote:

Jon:

Who granted your "engineer" status? I certainly hope it wasn't the NJ
Cosmatology Board.

There are no Software Engineers that I'm aware of, only a title for a
position, but no engineers. This is a legal thing, and why I ask,
because I also do software and have for years.

I decided to let the bugs in the software argument go lest I be called
a mainframe bigot.

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
The more of these Cirrus accidents I read about, the more I'm convinced
that Cirrus has a serious marketing/training problem:

Actually, this is not just Cirrus, but any high performance aircraft.
Consider the Bonanza, for instance, which went through a period where it
seemed like it was practically raining aluminum. The Cessna P210 also had
its problems like that. They are all good airplanes, but their greater
capabilities have tended to encourage pilots to fly into conditions that
they should not.

I know a pilot who wants a Cessna 337 with boots, "just in case" he
encounters icing. Well, the 337 is not certified for known ice, even with
boots. If he buys such a plane, I can practically guarantee that eventually
he will fly into ice. It is not simply a matter of accidentally flying into
ice, but the fact that he has boots will encourage him to fly into
conditions that he would not consider acceptable otherwise. There is nothing
"just in case" about it, even though that is how thinks of it in his mind.
He will believe that his icing encounter is accidental, and thank God that
he had boots on his plane. But the fact remains that he will have flown when
he would not have otherwise. If he does it often enough, and gets away with
it, then eventually he will get into trouble.

The same could be said for every other hazard in general aviation: low level
maneuvering, VFR into IMC, flying with broken equipment, etc. You know that
you don't really need that vacuum pump; it is just a short cross country and
you know the way like the back of your hand, so you go. Of course nothing
happens; it was a great flight. So next time you try it but the cloud cover
is a little lower. Next time you were just skimming the bottoms of the
clouds, but nothing happened. It gets to be a regular practice, then
suddenly your laziness, complacency, and need to get there all combine to
get you in serious trouble. You will really wish you had fixed the vacuum
pump, that you had paid more attention to the weather, that you had filed
IFR, that you had decided to stay home, etc. Every link in the chain of
events leading up to the accident had been there for many flights, but this
time it got you. You did not just wake up one morning and say, "Today I am
going to fly VFR into IMC without a vacuum pump," because you know that is
incredibly stupid. But you did something incredibly stupid anyway. And let
me be clear about this: the pilots who do this are not bad pilots or stupid
pilots or greenies. To the contrary, they are typically the most experienced
and capable pilots. The real problem is that they learned the wrong lessons
from their experience.

All right, Cirrus tells pilots that their parachute system can save their
lives. Their salesmen will tell say that it can save your butt if you are
IFR in the mountains at night when the engine quits. So it might. But what
is the message here? Cirrus is teaching pilots to fly IFR in the mountains
at night in a single engine plane. They are effectively saying that it is
safe to do so because the Cirrus has a parachute. Perhaps the engine has
been running rough, or the AI does not seem up to par, but you have your
little ace in the hole, right? So they go. Next they take off into low level
IMC and/or ice and/or without doing a proper instrument check and they are
found later in the day a mile from the end of the runway with bits of that
parachute all around them. They got into trouble, were still too low for
effective CAPS deployment, and died. Did Cirrus intend for them to do that?
No, but they encouraged that behavior by selling the CAPS system.

I don't mean to imply that CAPS is a bad idea. I would like to see it on
other planes, along with air bags, better crashworthiness, advanced
avionics, and all the rest. But these should not be sold as a means of
escaping the consequences of your own bad judgment. Airliners have fantastic
redundancy and safety capability, but their pilots do not have bad accident
records, despite the fact that these aircraft are arguably much more
complex, faster, and less maneuverable than anything in GA.

Professional pilots and general aviation pilots are separated not so much by
the differences in equipment and capabilities of their aircraft (though
these are enormous) but by training and supervision. An airline pilot who
takes too many risks is likely to come to the attention of others who can do
something about it. A GA pilot may become the subject of hangar gossip, but
he is likely to continue doing whatever it is that he is doing. An airline
pilot is largely locked into rigid rules and procedures that he must
follow -- a lot of his decisions were made for him a long time ago. The GA
pilot has considerably more freedom to bend his personal rules, if he has
any at all. He has considerably less guidance, and when he has a problem he
can't always call up dispatch or maintenance to ask their opinion.
Loneliness, less training, no simulator training, inferior or aging
equipment, fatigue, complacency, manufacturers' safety claims, alcohol and
other personal problems: all these add together to create general aviation's
terrible accident record.

John and Martha King, among others, have been attacking this problem head
on. These pilots and instructors are no longer willing to say that general
aviation is safe, because they know what a dangerous message that is. Flying
is dangerous. The pilot who forgets that is even more dangerous. The Kings
have a rule: "the most chicken pilot wins." I like that rule. It should be
expanded even to passengers. "The most chicken person on board wins." That
is, if anyone is even slightly uncomfortable about the flight, then the
flight does not go, no questions asked. Modern methods of teaching risk
management and scenario based training are taking far too long to be adopted
by the training community. We need this, and we need better simulators for
general aviation, and we need better recurrent training. If we had those
things, I think that we could go a long way toward cutting the accident
rate.

In article ,
"C J Campbell" wrote:

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
The more of these Cirrus accidents I read about, the more I'm convinced
that Cirrus has a serious marketing/training problem:

Actually, this is not just Cirrus, but any high performance aircraft.

Actually, it's not even just aircraft. Studies have shown that antilock
breaks don't decrease the accident rate in cars because drivers drive
faster in worse conditions thinking that the ABS will keep them out of
trouble.

"the most chicken pilot wins." I like that rule.

Well, you have to draw the line somewhere and decide what is an
acceptable risk, otherwise you'll never get out of your house, let alone
off the ground. After all, you can get killed by a Tsunami just sitting
on the beach. Sometimes **** happens, and the whole point of spending
money on fancy avionics and getting your instrument ticket is so you
don't have to wait for CAVU conditions to fly.

This is not to say that launching into known icing in the mountains at
night is a good idea under any circumstances, but "the most chicken
pilot wins" is, I think, going a little too far towards the opposite
extreme.

I tell my passengers that flying is as safe as one cares to make it,
that most people who die in planes die because the pilot did something
stupid, like run out of fuel, or fly beyond his or her capabilities, and
that I am very, very careful to avoid the stupid things. And yes,
there's the parachute (I fly a Cirrus). But none of these things are
absolute guarantees. Still, statistically the drive to the airport is
the most dangerous part of any flight (particularly given the way I
drive). The number of people killed in planes is nothing compared to
the continual carnage on the roads. But for some reason very few people
ever give that a second thought.

rg

In article ,
wrote:

However, my pennies are being saved for something with a rotor 8^) .

I have logged half an hour of 'copter time, and frankly they scare the
pants off me. (It was a sight to see, let me tell you.) My
understanding is that:

1. If you take your hand off the stick, you die.

2. If you within some (fairly large) envelope of unsafe combinations of
altitude and airspeed and your engine fails, you die.

3. If the engine fails and you don't notice within some small number of
seconds, you die, even if you were in the "safe" range of altitude and
airspeed to begin with.

Is that correct? A copter pilot friend of mine told me this years ago,
but it occurred to me that he may have been exaggerating to make himself
look studly. So I thought I'd do a little reality check here. Any
'copter pilots here that can set me straight?

rg