"There's no such thing a a little ice"

[Brown Bear]

Blah blah blah. We're all real impressed with what a bush hero you are, but what is the point of this? Starting a thread to advocate take-off with iced-up surfaces on a public forum for aviation enthusiasts? What the hell's wrong with you?

square, where ARE you manners, dude?

[square]

I left them IRL dash-8's are two crew your little helper can hold the ladder. Seriously though this kind of influence on people is just trouble, the only ones who listen are those who don't know any better.

[Brown Bear]

I left them IRL dash-8's are two crew your little helper can hold the ladder. Seriously though this kind of influence on people is just trouble, the only ones who listen are those who don't know any better.

You have a point. Then we all get quoted. Square said...... Doc said......... XSbank said....... said.......

BTW, who goes up the ladder...and who's the little helper? I'm scared to death of heights!

[square]

Oh and type 1 is recommended to be heated to 60 degrees to make it more effective but it's not a limitation. It'll just take more when it's colder. The limiting factor is the OAT, it has a LOUT around -33.

[1sttimeposter]

The fact that this threat has three pages disgusts me. Ice degrades performance. The wing is designed to be clean. Do the right thing. Let common sense prevail.

[OceansEdge]

I don't think a pilot is going to call a dispatcher over the question of whether or not he should launch with a trace of ice on the leading edges. Are you really expecting to asked for your opinion on that? I doubt very much his nose is in any way, out of joint. Seems yours is though? Let us in on where you work, or at least what kind of equipment you dispatch. In what part of the world? Seriously, in the scenario mentioned, how would the dispatcher have the experience, or knowledge to offer an informed opinion.

Sorry you feel that way, honestly I wish more guys would actually use their dispatcher. Initially I answered the question as asked - and suggested that in the scenario as presented perhaps a call to the CP might be in order. As for calling dispatch - you're right in the strict parameters of the scenario, chances are I'm not going to have an opinion on whether or not the ice he's looking at is 'more than a little', or it's safe to go. However, in the more general terms of my last post there have certainly been times when I have had access to resources or information that from where he's at he doesn't have, or knowledge and experience to venture an opinion. For instance in a case like this I've woken up the garage manager of a competitor to go out to the barn and fire up their own packs to get a guy out of a bind. Chances are pretty good you really don't know what dispatch can or cannot do for you until you call and ask. There are guys who never do - who presume that dispatch is only there to get their coffee and their room keys and make sure they've got a ride (fortunately they're a rare and dying breed), and then there are guys who pick up the phone and call and say "here's the problem, anything you can do?"

I'm not saying dispatch is the be all to end all and can magically solve every problem - I'm saying we're a trained professional member of your crew and should be included in the 'what are we/can we do? discussion. Yes, I do get persnickety when guys suggest "a pilots is never going to call dispatch over...."

As for my experience - 10 years - regional Canadian airlines, desk, Training Dispatcher, ACD, Chief Dispatcher, in some particularly harsh environs - want a copy of my CV? There are guys on this site whom I've worked with over the years - want a reference?

Anyway - I had no intention of hijacking this thread to advocate for a better understanding of what dispatch can do for you - I only meant to answer the question as posed from the dispatch POV. I'll leave it go now.

[Pugster]

There's such a thing as a little ice - but as others have stated you have to get rid of it regardless. To suggest it's OK to blast off with a contaminated aircraft is suggesting something illegal and potentially dangerous.

As for calling dispatch...Lets say I wound up at an alternate that I don't normally go to, that didn't have a CDF...dispatch is going to be one of the first people I talk to. They are ultimately the ones who will be able to do the legwork to have somebody come out to deice the aircraft - and if we can't deice and are therefore stuck they're the ones who are going to have to deal with the fallout.

Dispatchers may not be in the aircraft, but they're members of the crew regardless...

[Brown Bear]

Well, it would seem we went from discussing a slight amount of ice (a trace, I believe) to an ad for how much we love and need our dispatchers. I'm sure they're all lovely people. The question was simple. Do you go with the aforementioned trace of ice? Or not?
It wasn't about, "who ya gonna call....ghost busters....."

[swordfish]

Square, you need to be able to read before you're able to listen.

As I've stated in a couple of posts in this thread, I started it to underscore the bullshit we're taught in ground training that cannot be carried to the real world or is designed to scare the shit out of mindless automatons who swallow most of this crap without a second thought...then go preaching from their lofty pulpit about how dangerous ANY ice is, and how "safe" it is to clean the plane down to the educated condition - without really understanding what "safe" means in this context.

The thread has described how impossible and impracticable that is in many Northern locations:

• There aren't resources such as ladders, brooms, spray bottles trucks, et al...except what you carry yourself!
  There is either no DI fluid, or it's too cold to be of ANY use whatsoever.
  Tall ladders are dangerous, and IMHO unnecessary to do the top of the tail if you only have traces of stuff there.

I didn't suggest, encourage, coerce, or in any other way advocate, people to take off with a load of ice on your plane. What I do encourage is clean your leading edges, and do the best you can with whatever resources you can lay hands on in difficult conditions, and make a plan to handle what you can't deal with mechanically.

Pilots have to become familiar with what their plane will do, progressively and with experience, discovering what marvelous abilities it has. Now don't hand me that jive about becoming a test pilot, blah blah blah. That is so fuckn tired.

We've ALL been test pilots at one time or another whenever you sidestep a regulation or limitation, fly over gross, accidentally exceed Vmo, take off from gravel where your plane hasn't been certified for it, take off without ASDA, and hundreds of other operational conditions where the plane DID in fact jump those hoops in its certification testing, but the aircraft was never licensed for those capabilities.

I could run down all the times and bizarre takeoffs I have done (or been shown as a copilot) with planes that - under today's standards - should never have become airborne, or when they did, should have fallen out of the sky. But what's the point?

My mission is not to flaunt my own experience, or to justify further absurd transgressions of what is NOW REGULATED. It is simply to advise you all that there IS such a thing as a little ice. And maybe stop preaching the fanatical & ridiculous extremes that we are taught in ground school.

Think about it...then get a grip, for God's sake.

[swordfish]

Here's a suggestion how to classify how bad your plane is "iced up":

• hardly anything
  you can see or feel 'something' on there
  a trace
  a little
  a bit (what are we gonna do about that stuff?)
  some (we gotta get rid of that stuff)
  a shitload

[swordfish]

....that's a tongue-in-cheek post btw, for those of you who don't get it...

[PanEuropean]

...But where the boundary is between a little and a more than a little cannot be defined scientifically.

I beg to disagree. Fellow AvCanada forum member Doc provided a most eloquent and scholarly definition of the difference just a few posts prior to yours (middle of page 2), when he wrote that the criteria used to define "bad" ice is:

...Your ass will start to munch on your seat...

I think that is a far more accurate and scientific definition of "too much ice" than even the most sophisticated and expensive Rosemount probe could provide.

Michael

[square]

OK swordfish, you're right, a speck of ice is not going to cause a crash on takeoff. So let's all go along with you and ignore our training, the CARs and go ahead with adopting your forum post about not taking off with a "shitload" of ice as our new SOP. That makes our go-no go decision a lot simpler, and gives us much more authority with our employers and our customers.

If we have an engine failure or encounter more ice aloft, that will either be fine because we have lots of power or it's such a remote possibility that we don't have to worry about it, depending on your aircraft.

The "NO SHITLOAD" policy. Courtesy of sword "the BUSH HERO" fish. And might we add, that you CPL students are a bunch of noobs and don't know how things will work in the real world. In the real world we just take off ICED UP so we can show up unprepared!

[swordfish]

dude...you don't REALLY wanna go to war with me...do you...?

Oops...I missed it: yours was a tongue-in-cheek post

[justplanecrazy]

The thread has described how impossible and impracticable that is in many Northern locations:

• There aren't resources such as ladders, brooms, spray bottles trucks, et al...except what you carry yourself!
  There is either no DI fluid, or it's too cold to be of ANY use whatsoever.
  Tall ladders are dangerous, and IMHO unnecessary to do the top of the tail if you only have traces of stuff there.

How do you clean the plane when there is a lot of ice... or is a lot just a little more than a little, so still just a little ice?

[swordfish]

The thread has described how impossible and impracticable that is in many Northern locations:

• There aren't resources such as ladders, brooms, spray bottles trucks, et al...except what you carry yourself!
  There is either no DI fluid, or it's too cold to be of ANY use whatsoever.
  Tall ladders are dangerous, and IMHO unnecessary to do the top of the tail if you only have traces of stuff there.

How do you clean the plane when there is a lot of ice... or is a lot just a little more than a little, so still just a little ice?

If there's "more than a little", you taxi it to your nearest CDIF and get a spray.

[Hawkeye4077]

The defense department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.

Please Don't be Stupid!!!

'nuff said!!!

[square]

Carry brooms and de-ice fluid bottles with you on the way to airports unserviced by "CDIF's." Bring wing covers if you're staying for long and learn how to remove the battery from your aircraft if it's good and cold so you can bring it inside a heated facility with you. If you do regular service to such an airport, leave a ladder there if you'll need one to inspect / de-ice the tail. If you have nothing you can use at all to de-ice the plane, don't fly through icing conditions to get there unless your equipment can break it off before you land. If it's a fairly frequent occurence that you can't get the job done then a smart management team will set you up with the tools you need to do it -- be proactive, set a good example and as one old pilot told me, "make it look good for the accident report" and you won't have to worry about fines and violations. In a real bind you can always chip it off with the old safeway club card.

[swordfish]

Good advice. But it should also be in the thread: "Winter Operating Tips" which is where I was originally when I started this thread.

[Janszoon]

LOL, there is no airport so far north that it can't be fitted with a LADDER and BROOM! The only reason they're absent is an absence of common sense and balls on your own part. A pilot so timid that he can't ask for that equipment, AND a pressure bottle of de-ice fluid ought to go back down south. I know it takes some muscle to de-ice with a broom but if you're shying away from that you could use the workout anyway.

So you going to bring along a 25 foot ladder to get to the tail of an aircraft such as this in the north?

68852_1139327069.jpg (251.76 KiB) Viewed 1093 times

Have you ever stood on a 25 foot ladder? Do you have fall-arrest equipment available to you while you are on this extra-high ladder? I wouldn't want to accidentally fall off one of those. You also planning on using cold glycol in that little "pressure bottle" to de-ice in -20? You know it must be heated to +60 Celsius to work right? These are some of the issues pilots face up north and it isn't as easy as "bringing a broom and a ladder", which most pilots I know flying up north do anyway.

[swordfish]

Thank you Janszoon.

[square]

I've climbed and worked on 25' forms it's not lost on me, though I can't see that aircraft or a dash going into some native outpost with no facilities at all though I guess it's possible sure.. My problem is with the train of excuses you all seem so keen to provide. It's lazy. It's not that hard to do your job. Yes I'm aware type 1 is most effective at 60 degrees and you can get a drop-in element that'll plug into any outlet that'll heat the stuff inside of 10 minutes. Or use it at cabin temp and the ice will still squeegee off.

[G3]

Nearing the end of 2010 with all of the accumulated, documented scientific data of contamination and its adverse effects on flying surfaces and the anectdotal evidence in ice related crashes, I am astounded that this conversation is even taking place. Quite frankly, it is concerning.

Just remember:"The problem with ice is, it melts in the post crash fire"

[G3]

Nearing the end of 2010 with all of the accumulated, documented scientific data of contamination and its adverse effects on flying surfaces and the anectdotal evidence in ice related crashes, I am astounded that this conversation is even taking place. Quite frankly, it is concerning.

Just remember:"The problem with ice is, it melts in the post crash fire"

[KK7]

So I've gotta ask:
Why is it taught in ground school and regulated? Should it change?