By Dave Matheny, EAA 184186
This story first appeared in the January 2020 issue of EAA Sport Aviation.
“We don’t get many icicles in here,” the bartender said.
“And at these prices, you won’t get many more,” the guy icicle said.
No, no, wait — they were not icicles but my bride-to-be and me. And it was not a bar because I never drink while flying — or as in this case, even after flying — just to be on the safe side. Lousy joke anyway.
In any case, it’s unusual to have experienced airframe icing — or however this incident would be classified — and then to have laughed about it afterward. But that’s how it went.
A whole lot of years ago, Jean, the young lady, had agreed to come along as I flew my Quicksilver MX two-seater on a winter’s day. She had been coming along anyway, ever since we first met earlier that year. But it was now winter here in Minnesota, with the usual brutal weather, and this time it was different.
What we had was an unusually mild day, with temps in the 30s and snow melting and creating mud puddles on the runway. That was warm by Minnesota standards. We had to go! On takeoff, the spinning nose wheel doused us with muddy water, making us gasp at first, then find it very funny for a moment, and then find it painful as it dried in the icy 45-mph wind. Jean, who had gotten the worst of it, appeared to be crying until I realized that the tears were only her eyes watering and leaving clean streaks down her muddy cheeks as they were blown by the slipstream. I suppose I looked the same.
Muddy Waters
We flew around for maybe 15 minutes until we couldn’t take it anymore. The wind chill was like a continuous death blow that stops just short of killing you. This was a real wind chill, not that hypothetical stuff that we hear about in weather forecasts when the announcer says that tomorrow’s temperature is going to be XX with a wind chill of YY. It only applies at that exact wind speed, which you are unlikely to encounter on the ground, going along and experiencing momentary lulls and gusts. But we were seated side by side with no structure to shield our aching faces from the 45-mph winds and a temperature of 35. That worked out to about 19 degrees Fahrenheit, which, frankly, doesn’t sound that bad, but then you have to factor in the blast of air on our faces.
Reducing throttle to enter the pattern, I discovered that pulling the throttle back did not reduce engine speed. This particular Rotax 503 seemed to be almost cursed, but it wasn’t an engine problem; it was a throttle problem.
Fortunately, I had practiced a lot of engine-out landings — in addition to the several forced on me by actual engine-outs — so it was just a matter of getting to that point in the three-dimensional space around the field where I knew with certainty that I could make the runway, and then hitting the kill switch. All pilots know how to do this, I think, or should. The landing went well.
We still thought it was kind of funny, as we drank hot chocolate at a nearby restaurant and peeled off the outer layers of wet, ice-encrusted clothing.
Back at the hangar, I had to search for a long time to find the cause. Finally, I saw that water had splashed into the forward-pointing sheath around the throttle cable and frozen, causing the cable to seize inside — an unfunny consequence of all that amusing muddy water thrown back by the nose wheel. Who knew that a mere spray of water could have such dire consequences? Well, among the readership of this magazine, probably quite a few would know that any spray of water in freezing temps can be bad news.
Ice Factors
Parts of this article are going to be more than familiar to most pilots, especially the description of ice formation on wings, fuselage, propeller, and tail.
I’ve always remembered the words of an old salt, or the aviation equivalent of one, who said that ice would accumulate like having a 2-by-4 glued to the leading edge of your wing. I have never experienced that, nor do I ever want to.
So, here are my thoughts about airframe ice, borrowing heavily from an AOPA booklet titled Aircraft Icing and easily found online under that title. Rime ice has a rough, milky-white appearance and follows the contours of the surface. Clear ice is sometimes clear and smooth — and I can attest to that, because I have been looking at a lump of ice just now in a battered old aluminum tumbler, and yes, it is nominally clear but can contain enough tiny air bubbles to make it semi-opaque. AOPA goes on to say that the larger the accretion on the airframe, the less glaze ice conforms to the shape of the wing; the shape is often characterized by the presence of upper and lower “horns” (which is what reminded me of the 2-by-4). Clear ice is denser, harder, and more transparent than rime ice and is generally hard to break.
Prop ice: I have mentioned before my going to the field one wintry, foggy day just to run the engine on my Ercoupe, knowing that conditions eliminated any chance of flying. After climbing out, I walked past the nose and was arrested by the sight of the prop, with its smooth coating of ice for some inches out from the spinner, and no ice beyond that. It’s a reminder that airspeed — in other words, the higher speed of the outer section of the prop — and, to some degree, just plain flinging-off, are factors. Who knows to what extent? Neither my old salt 2-by-4 friend nor anybody else.
And don’t forget tailplane ice. When it accumulates on the horizontal stabilizer, the effect can be as disastrous as wing ice, but in the opposite direction. Yes, boys and girls, that means the nose gets suddenly heavy, bringing respectability to the thousands of movies with that clichéd scene where the pilot calls out to the co-pilot, “Help me! Help me pull ’er out!” It’s the moment where all the kids who were watching the movie with me, all of us Air Force brats, would shout out sneers and disapproval. Now, after learning about tailplane stalls, I hang my head and keep quiet.
There’s lots more to be described about kinds of ice, but frankly, are you ever going to voluntarily expose yourself and your aircraft to any of this? You should not, unless you have de-icing equipment, and I would bet that hardly anyone flying an ultralight or light-sport aircraft has that. Even a sophisticated LSA with every known — and legal — modification will be unlikely to have it. And it also should be made clear that many types of ultralight aircraft are unlikely to be affected. Powered parachutes and hang gliders, for example, are likely to get pretty uncomfortable for the pilot long before airframe icing gets to the 2-by-4 stage.
Oceans of Room
I need to say that the image here is not exactly mine. I used as my jumping-off point a 1514 copper engraving known generally as “Peasant Couple Dancing” by the brilliant, legendary Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. I made lots of changes, including making the near figure male — me, in other words, swanning around like a grand figure in my usual goofball way. The far figure became Jean, her back turned because she absolutely hates any pictures of herself.
What you are seeing here is a stage I go through in making a more finished drawing. I just thought that some of my readers — viewers — would be interested. Oh, there have been hundreds of tiny changes. By some miracle, I was able to preserve the first goofy-looking face and to keep it through several redraws — a thing that, as any artist can tell you, almost never happens, but it did in this case. Artists are the greatest critics of their own work, and I was ready to jump on this with both feet, but no.
Most of the little lines you see would disappear. Her left hand required any number of redraws. But I thought it looked good at this stage.
There is no such thing as improving on Dürer’s original, but oceans of room to improve on me.
Dave Matheny, EAA 184186, is a private pilot and an FAA ground instructor. He has been flying light aircraft, including ultralights, for nearly 40 years. He can be reached at DaveMatheny3000@yahoo.com.