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3G
There’s a whole lot of utility in light GA that comes with a whole lot of risk and compromise because physics often collides with emotion and/or ego.
The key to light GA is understanding what compromises have to be made. FrEx, schedules. The emotional argument is I this $750K aviation appliance so we can travel like we do in the SUV, only go farther for the weekend.
We’ll just blast off Friday after work and be back Sunday evening because work/school/etc. on Monday. There’s been plenty of blood spilled in that decision over the decades, most recently, I think about the in flight breakup of the Bonanza in Tennessee.
Winter overcast in the northeast could have no impact when driving. That becomes an icing issue because you have to climb/descend thru it and the freezing level is low enough. From a risk perspective, you’re risking your family on a wet wing, a system that isn’t foolproof, in a plane that’s at the edge of it’s operating weight, but little Bobby has a math test in the morning and Bob the senior just wants to get a good night’s sleep so he can drop the kids at school on his way to work Monday and it just really isn’t convenient to slip a day for better weather and we don’t want to cancel because everyone’s been looking forward to this trip for so long. But it’s also too expensive to have standby airline tickets and we have the plane to avoid the airlines, anyways.
The less you compromises you want to make, the more you move toward something that burns kerosene, because they’re designed to do those things from the outset. That’s usually a SETP today, but could be a pressurized piston single or twin correctly configured.
But ice weighs a lot. That requires more horsepower to overcome. And disrupts airflow over the wings. If you don’t get the wet wing early enough, physics wins. If the system hiccups, physics wins. If ice accretes faster or for longer than the system can handle, physics wins. All those wins is why most light GA FIKI systems are in place to get you on the ground as quickly as possible, not so you can slog it out over 500nm to get home.
Aviation decision making starts on the ground. You’re the one who voluntarily chooses to launch. Do you do so eyes wide open or eyes wide shut?
Me? When I put any pax onboard, I’m liable for getting them back on terra firma in the same condition or better than when we took off. The risk I accept isn’t mine, it’s theirs.
Imagine if I started my pax brief with “The icing forecast indicates we’ll likely encounter some light icing and that means we have to hope the system works right or we will may die in a crash. Would you still like to go forward with this, because remember also we heat the plane with the engine exhaust system do there’s a chance we could also suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning that impacts our ability to recognize we’re getting ice on the wings?
But if all that works out, we’ll be flying at night and unless the windscreen flashes over, I’ll need you to keep a flashlight pointed at the wing to watch for ice since we only have 45mins worth of goop available and our flight is planned for 3hrs.”
Now Bobby Jr thinks this sounds like an adventure, so he’s on board. Good thing the six-year old’s mom isn’t here because she’d actually understand what I said and she gets mad enough when I let him cross the street without holding my hand, so all’s good.
Meanwhile, the good missus doesn’t even know the pilot is testing actuarial table of the life insurance policy that likely excludes death in a light GA plane as a covered event.
IBM presents You Make The Call.
