Ice go /no go advice...

I would not have gone. It looks like a high probability of ice and nothing
you could do about it if you found any.

Some of us in this group live and fly in the Great Lakes Ice Machine.
We have all learned that local knowledge alerts us to whether the
conditions forecast for this area are flyable or not.

Put us in the middle of a trip in another geographical area of the
country and our local knowledge of the Great Lakes is still applicable,
but moderated.

As an example, say we want to fly from Michigan or Ohio to the East
Coast. If we have read Ernie Gann's books, we know the Alleghanies are
also know for their ice producing capabilities, but in a different way.

Moisture can come up with a warm, low level, Low pressure system from
the Gulf and collide with an upper level cold High pressure system from
the northwest. The lifting action on the front side of the Low and the
mountains creates an unpredictable, unstable air mass. The High may
move fast and push the Low quickly off to the E-NE, or the Low may be
the stronger of the two and stall over the mountains.

Then the pumping action begins. Warm moist air from the Atlantic Gulf
Stream gets sucked in to the NE and mixed with the cold air from Canada
to the W-NW, and warm southern air and it is anyones guess where the
rain ends and the snow begins. There are alot of dynamics.

Or an upper level, closed Low aloft coming down from Canada will really
mess with the forecast as it did this past week. The forecasts
beginning a week ago Sunday changed every day with each issuance as the
week progressed.

Saturday was supposed to be cloudy with freezing rain moving up from
Kentucky. That didn't happen until Sunday, and Saturday was cold,
clear, windy day for flying.

As others have posted, you have to understand the terrain beneath you.
In Michigan and Ohio, you have vast stretches of flat land. Central
Pennsylvania is quite hilly with some MEA's up to 4,000 and 5,000 MSL.

In Ohio and Michigan, there are airports or landing strips everywhere
(except SE OH) but in Central PA, it may be 50-60 nm between flat spots
to land.

Personally, I watch the temperature/dewpoint spreads at the surface and
the freezing level. The smaller the range, the less likely I am to fly.
With the consolidation of Flight Service Stations, the weather
available to you is less reliable than it was 25-30 years ago.
AWOS/ASOS give you a snapshot of the weather, not an image.

Sorry for the rambling nature, I couldn't figure out a comprehensive
manner to arrange it, so it is a "stream of thought" posting.

wrote
Cloud bases vary from 1500 to 6000 ft over the route.
Rain reported all over the region.,.
Freezing level (From winds aloft) between 6000 and 9000
MEA 6000 ft with one 16mile segment of 6400 ft.
This was a very close decision for me, and I opted for the No-Go.
I also releaized that I don't feel I know enoguh about making this
decision.

Let's start with the basic rule. Always have an ironclad out.

A descent below the freezing level is an ironclad out. Remaining
clear of clouds is an ironclad out, except for the special case of
freezing rain which can only occur if there is a temperature
inversion. That's it.

So here you are, looking at flying IMC without the ability to descend
below the freezing level safely, and without the ability to remain
clear of clouds. No ironclad out. You chose not to go. Makes sense
to me.

The only question is - is that MEA really a hard floor? There are
routes where the MEA is 6000 and the MOCA is 2000, due to
communication/navaid reception issues. If you have GPS/LORAN you can
trust, then a descent below the MEA may be viable. Sometimes you can
get a descent to the MVA from ATC. Basically, the MEA is not
necessarily the last word in how low you can go - but it is a good
start.

PIREPs are basically worthless when it comes to ice. So are AIRMET's
- except for what happens AFTER. If there is visible moisture and
subfreezing temperature, you can get ice. That's all there is to it.
Someday the predictive methods may get better than that, but they're
not there yet.

Under normal operating conditions, you may not be able to get a
descent to the MEA, never mind below that to the MVA. The altitude
may not be available. If you declare an emergency, you CAN get it.
However, a flight assist report will be filed by ATC. This is where
it's going to matter if icing was in the forecast - if there was an
AIRMET. If it's forecast, it's known. You flew into it. The POH for
your airplane almost certainly forbids it. You're busted. If the
icing was unforecast, you will get away with it. Keep that in mind.

There are people who ignore the above rules, and will operate in IMC,
above the feezing level, and without the option of descending below
it. Very rarely does anyone get busted, but every year a few of them
fall out of the sky.

These are not idiots - these are mostly people who choose to take a
calculated risk - that being that the ice won't be bad enough to force
them out of the sky at the wrong time. They base those choices on
their experiences with the airplane and the weather. Sometimes the
risk goes sour, and no amount of skill will help.

I won't telll you not to do this - but you might, at that point,
consider other options. If the bases are 1500 ft AGL and higher along
the route, it seems to me that it would be a lot safer to go VFR
rather than IFR. If VFR below a 1500 ft ceiling seems terribly
difficult or dangerous to you, you might consider investing a fraction
of the time and money you spent on instrument training and get some
good low-VFR training.

Finally, in regard to your update. The fact that the alternator
failed on that particular plane at that particular time neither
validates nor invalidates your decision. Alternators fail with
depressing regularity on airplanes - far more often than they do on
cars. A battery is SUPPOSED to have adequate capacity to power the
stuff you need to fly IFR for 30 minutes (though you will find that
this is not a rule that applies to most of the GA fleet - it's often
quoten but not generally applicable) but in reality, I can assure you
that most rental operations will not replace the battery until it is
unable to start the airplane. You have to assume that the alternator
could fail on any flight. If alternator failure on a particular
flight can kill you, you just need to decide how much you trust the
maintenance (wrt battery and alternator), how long you will be
exposed, and how badly you need to make the trip.

Personally, I won't get into an airplane for an IFR flight without a
battery-powered GPS unless it has a fully redundant electrical system
- one where no single point failure will take it out. This is
exceedingly rare in singles, and not universal even on twins.

With a decent handheld GPS, you can (with the proper training) fly any
VOR or NDB approach with a higher level of accuracy than is available
from the underlying navaid, so alternator failure (and the total
electrical failure that will soon follow) is not a huge problem.

Michael

(PaulaJay1) wrote in message ...
Good thought, Peter. The wife and I call these "mid Lake decisions" and we are
not allowed to make them. Comes from sailing across large lakes (we have a
boat on Lake Erie). When you are on one shore and going to the other, you
decide about the weather, etc. but when you are in the middle of the lake you
don't second guess your decision.

Agreed. You also can't make good weather decisions a day or even a
half day in advance. I can't tell you the number of times the weather
looked no-go 6 hours before the flight and ended up wonderful. Weather
guessing is still an almost random art. Its very common to hear about
crappy weather for the next week and then get CAVU. I try not to make
decisions until about an hour before departure. I'm flying around a
family with hotel reservations etc but I can honestly say the no-go
has been very rare despite forcasts of many no-gos.

-Robert

In article ,
Michael wrote:
However, a flight assist report will be filed by ATC. This is where
it's going to matter if icing was in the forecast - if there was an
AIRMET. If it's forecast, it's known. You flew into it.

At an aviation safety seminar (the gist of which was "please declare an
emergency if you need to, and do it soon enough that we can help") an
inspector from the FSDO stood up and said that the flight assist reports
end up on his desk, and as a matter of policy he does not pursue
certificate action based on them. Makes sense to me.

I'm not saying "go fly in ice!" I just wouldn't want your comment to
discourage people from declaring an emergency if they do.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

The same feather is here...

I was considering to IFR solo from EMT to PAO (similar trip) on
Saturday, the next day after I get the IFR ticket.

Although I did not fly that day. In my mind I had confident that I
would go if time and plane were available, giving the following
reasons:

1. The weather was not that bad, by analyzing satellite images, airmat
(no ice), ADDS and TAF in the previous night and the morning. Also,
the actual weather was better than the forcast.

2. The trend was getting beter instead of getting worse toward the end
of day. (TAF, Prog chart and weather.com) Actually, to prove that,
all Bay area airports were clear of cloud in the Saturday evening.

3. -SHRA does not mean too much unless you have to fly through the
warm front and lower level is freezing (clear ice). This will most
likely not happen in south west but east coast or south (warm moisture
from the ocrean south move north met with super-cold airmass) I only
have to worry about the rime ice if it happen. Sorry I did not call
FSS to get the actual freezing level step down. Therefore I can't
answer whether it will freeze at 6k. However, it does not look like
it will freeze at 6k from my past experience with forcast given that
relative high ground temporatures on that day. (so the PIREPs were at
9k instead of 6k)

4. I am familiar with terrian along the route. I flew the same victor
airways and approaches many times even I was only a VFR pilot. You
can fly as low as 5500 VFR. Most of MEFs (max elevation figure, the
big number on each block of sectional chart, which is max elevation +
500)) are lower than 5000, mostly 2k to 4k. Note that there is no MIA
but MVA (max vectoring alt, controller use to vector the a/c). The
MVA has 500' obstacle clearance during radar vectors. As you can see
from those low MEF numbers then you can figure out how low the MVAa
also are. When I was VFR, controllers could vector me and provide
traffic warning when I was only 5500.

Also, San Joaquin valley (0 msl) is few minutes away along my route
for my icing get-off back door. For the CRQ to SBP trip, basically
ocean (0 msl) is within few miles away.

5. SJC is right next to PAO for the alternate.

The reasons that I did not go:
1. I have too much of the other things have to finish. That's a
nightmare after put off too much of my regular duty to completed the
checkride.

2. Don't have the current approach charts for North CA.


-cpu

(Ben Jackson) wrote
Michael wrote:
However, a flight assist report will be filed by ATC. This is where
it's going to matter if icing was in the forecast - if there was an
AIRMET. If it's forecast, it's known. You flew into it.

At an aviation safety seminar (the gist of which was "please declare an
emergency if you need to, and do it soon enough that we can help") an
inspector from the FSDO stood up and said that the flight assist reports
end up on his desk, and as a matter of policy he does not pursue
certificate action based on them. Makes sense to me.

My experience is that this is simply not true. BTDT. Narrowly
avoided a certificate action. What's more, the inspector in question
waited 3 months before following up, thus ensuring that weather
reports and forecasts from that time were no longer available for me
to prove my case. That happens to be against their rules (got that
from another inspector at the same FSDO) but they do it anyway because
the courts have not been agressive about slapping them down for it.

Michael

Personally I will confess to a high level of superstition in this matter.
When "something just doesn't feel right" and I can't figure out what it is I
stick to ground-pounding. We absorb and synthesize tremendous amounts of
information that we don't recall individually and I think a lot of that is
returned to us in the form of "gut feelings" etc. Now I know there was no
causal connection here whatsoever, but you know what, man doesn't live by
reason alone.

-cwk.


"Peter R." wrote in message
...
wrote:

It was a good decision to cancel.
I just got a phone call, and the airplane I was going to use
had an alternator/electrical system failure, today, while someone else
was flying it in the pattern.

Hmmm... not so fast! Hindsight is 20-20. While certainly true
that you were lucky it wasn't you in IMC during this aircraft's
alternator failure, IMO you cannot use this incident to validate your
go/no go decision.

I'm on Ben's side. I've said the E word three times over the years and never
even got a "call the tower." Your experience was the exception, not the
rule. I have it directly from the safety guy at the controller's union that
they have no interest in filing paperwork.

Bob Gardner

"Michael" wrote in message
om...
(Ben Jackson) wrote
Michael wrote:
However, a flight assist report will be filed by ATC. This is where
it's going to matter if icing was in the forecast - if there was an
AIRMET. If it's forecast, it's known. You flew into it.

At an aviation safety seminar (the gist of which was "please declare an
emergency if you need to, and do it soon enough that we can help") an
inspector from the FSDO stood up and said that the flight assist reports
end up on his desk, and as a matter of policy he does not pursue
certificate action based on them. Makes sense to me.

My experience is that this is simply not true. BTDT. Narrowly
avoided a certificate action. What's more, the inspector in question
waited 3 months before following up, thus ensuring that weather
reports and forecasts from that time were no longer available for me
to prove my case. That happens to be against their rules (got that
from another inspector at the same FSDO) but they do it anyway because
the courts have not been agressive about slapping them down for it.

Michael

I declared an emergency under somewhat questionable circumstances (I
lost a magneto at night, felt like an emergency to me). All I got was
excellent flight following to touchdown and then a week later a letter
from the FSDO asking me if everything came out allright. I wrote back
a nice thank you note telling them that everything ended up fine and
commending them on their excellent response. My impression is they
probably showed it to their supervisors. There was never any question
of any hearing or certificate action against me, never even a hint.

My advice, if it feels like an emergency and you think it will help.
Go ahead and declare it.

"Bob Gardner" wrote in message news:X7gSb.178538$I06.1833391@attbi_s01...
I'm on Ben's side. I've said the E word three times over the years and never
even got a "call the tower." Your experience was the exception, not the
rule. I have it directly from the safety guy at the controller's union that
they have no interest in filing paperwork.

Bob Gardner

"Michael" wrote in message
om...
(Ben Jackson) wrote
Michael wrote:
However, a flight assist report will be filed by ATC. This is where
it's going to matter if icing was in the forecast - if there was an
AIRMET. If it's forecast, it's known. You flew into it.

At an aviation safety seminar (the gist of which was "please declare an
emergency if you need to, and do it soon enough that we can help") an
inspector from the FSDO stood up and said that the flight assist reports
end up on his desk, and as a matter of policy he does not pursue
certificate action based on them. Makes sense to me.

My experience is that this is simply not true. BTDT. Narrowly
avoided a certificate action. What's more, the inspector in question
waited 3 months before following up, thus ensuring that weather
reports and forecasts from that time were no longer available for me
to prove my case. That happens to be against their rules (got that
from another inspector at the same FSDO) but they do it anyway because
the courts have not been agressive about slapping them down for it.

Michael