Posted by
The INFORMER (Cokie907@yahoo.com) on Sunday, February 15, 2009 5:48:22 PM
No, I'm not talking about "icing" on a cake or "icing" a hockey puck behind the opponent's net. This time I'm taking a departure from politics into my area of expertise and that is flying airplanes. What a relief you think to yourself, Mister Meat and Taters is actually going to discuss something where he just might know what he's talking about! :-)~
"Icing" on an aircraft can be deadly and every few years, we are taught that lesson. A flying aircraft is a delicate balance of several different factors and when Mother Nature throws enough ice on one to cool 20 kegs of beer, things get shaky, scary and even downright dangerous. Icing not only changes the shape of lifting surfaces on the aircraft (which are shaped precisely mind you) but it increases the weight and drag of an aircraft as well. There's no telling what kind of havoc can break loose when an aircraft gets into what I call a "death cloud" and starts to load up with ice so quickly that mere seconds of delay may spell disaster.
I've flown thousands of hours over the skies of upstate NY and hundreds of hours in hard instrument (IMC) conditions between the surface and 11,000 feet where icing is most prevalent. I flew into places such as Potsdam, Watertown, Utica, Elmira and of course Buffalo. In 14,000 hours of flight time, I have found the weather in this area to be the most challenging in the country. My travels took me through all sorts of wild and wooly wintertime weather with about 97% of it being safely flyable. But every once in awhile, a pilot runs into a situation that is extraordinary and the challenge is to recognize when it exists.
When in icing conditions, I've always taught my co-pilots that the best indication of icing is the wingtip strobe lights. When those suckers start flashing really bright, it means your cloud is very thick, with a high liquid vapor content and much more conducive to forming ice on an aircraft. The strobelight flashes will be bright enough to make you think it is summertime and thunderstorms are afoot. But then, once in a blue moon, the strobe lights will get even brighter and that is a harbinger of doom looming ahead.
I've only seen it 4 or 5 times in my 17 year career but the cloud will be so thick that the strobe lights will appear as if they are mounted on the nose of the aircraft. The area around the aircraft will almost look surreal and you might think you're traveling in H.G. Wells' time machine, about to make a jump back to the previous century. (God knows how I'd love to....) The flashes will be so bright that a pilot will want to reach into his flightbag and get out his sunglasses. I'm not kidding.
This is the environment that a pilot needs to recognize as "abbie-normal" and decide in seconds to either climb, descend (if possible) or just keep the speed up and get the heck out of dodge. The brave may get the glory but in aviation, the cowards live longer!