Page 20 - TNTMay18

It’s All About the Ice by Kevin Ware
Ice is a dif cult hazard to predict. But in the Paci c Northwest with its high MEAs, frequent IFR conditions, cloud tops that rise well into the ight levels, and generally strong westerly winds aloft complicate the how to handle the ice problem.
For some reason, you long ago quit making saliva. Your mouth is so dry it is hard to swallow. Your hands are cold, but at the same time strangely wet with sweat, as are your ears under the Bose
headsets. And finally, if all these symptoms of stress were not enough, you just realized a very urgent need to urinate.
The C414 you are flying is at FL180 eastbound over the mid cascades and no longer climbing even under full power. You can see little outside because even the side windows are partially iced over. The four passengers in the back are sipping coffee from a green Aladdin thermos, chatting about their construction project and seemingly not in the least worried about anything. You start to wonder if you should have ever got involved with this professional pilot thing to start with and desperately want to be on the ground.
In the Pacific Northwest during the winter months, this experience happens all too often to pilots who have just started flying professionally, or pilots in their own aircraft and not familiar the area. Ice is probably the most difficult hazard to predict. But high MEAs, frequent IFR conditions, cloud tops that rise well into the flight levels, and generally strong westerly winds aloft complicate the how to handle the ice problem. Over the years I have flown a variety of different aircraft in this setting. Without question those that have caused the driest mouth experiences and the most careful decision-making are pressurized piston twins.
Now, that may seem kind of odd given those aircraft bring benefits to the table that non-pressurized, and not turbocharged aircraft are lacking. But that is precisely the problem. The pressurized piston twins are just “good enough” to get you in real trouble. Trouble you would readily recognize and not go anywhere near in less capable aircraft (say a C182 or C310), and those that a CJ or Lear would just blast right through on the way to FL410 without any problem at all.
Using a stressful flight from Seattle (BFI) to Boise (BOI) from the distant past as an example, what follows are some of the thought processes and techniques I have learned from others (and also regrettably from bad personal experiences), in 10,000 hours of this kind of flying. Given I am still
18 • TWIN & TURBINE
May 2018