Page 32 - January 15 Volume 19 Number 1

Twin Proficiency:
Single-Pilot Safety
Stand-Down,
Last month I described the first presentation made in the National Business Aircraft Association’s 2014 Single-Pilot Safety Stand-down, held in October. That first session focused on single-pilot resource management. Additional sessions, one on loss of control and upset/emergency maneuver training by Paul “BJ” Ransbury of Aviation Performance Solutions, another by Dr. Scott Shappell of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University on spatial disorientation, were excellent reviews of these important topics. This month, however, I’ll focus on a particularly interesting presentation: “Airframe Icing: Filling in the Details,” by Scott Dennstaedt.
Scott Dennstaedt is an FAA-certificated instrument flight instructor and former National Weather Service research meteorologist. He specializes in teaching pilots how to minimize their exposure to adverse weather. In the last 15 years, Scott has authored over 100 articles published in various aviation magazines. He is now employed by ForeFlight LLC as its weather scientist— this hints of interesting and perhaps unique new weather features in future updates of the market-cornering ForeFlight Mobile flight planning application. Scott also owns and operates AvWxWorkshops.com, a subscription- based aviation weather training website.
To prompt your consideration of airframe ice detection, avoidance and escape, let me present a few of my many notes from Scott’s NBAA presentation:
Airframe Icing: Filling in the Details
The presentation focused primarily on operating aircraft certificated for flight in icing conditions... the so-called FIKI, or Flight Into Known Icing, aircraft
30 • TWIN & TURBINE
certification. Scott asked a question: “How many feel that your primary training did not adequately prepare you from an icing perspective?”
The classroom participants, packed primarily with business pilots of light turbines and piston twins, unanimously agreed that primary training does basically nothing to prepare a pilot for ice flying. Addressing the ice-certificated crowd, Scott noted that: “We’re taught how to plan a flight to avoid ice, not plan a flight through ice.”
Is gaining icing experience the answer? Just get out and fly more often, that’s all you need to do, right? Well, no. Scott agrees with the conclusions of the National Transportation Safety Board’s report Risk Factors Associated with Weather-Related General Aviation Accidents (September 2005). On page 38 of that report the NTSB states:
• It appears that pilots generally require formal training to obtain weather knowledge, and cannot be expected to acquire it on their own as they simply gain more flight experience.
• “There are no ‘great’ rules of thumb with respect to airframe ice,” Scott reports. “You need to understand the science behind airframe ice:”
• Airframe ice is directly related to how supercooled liquid water is realized in the atmosphere.
• In a pure vapor environment (no condensation nuclei), condensation won’t occur until the relative humidity exceeds 300%.
• Condensation occurs when adequate volumes of cloud condensation nuclei, or CCN (“dirt”) exist.
Part II
by Thomas P. Turner
JANUARY 2015