Colgan Beech Winter Ops Question

v1valarob said:
When does Colgan say to turn on the boots on the beech?
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Just before touchdown in the landing flare, while the FO is trying to grease it on.

At least, that's when the Captain kicked the boots the time I bet him a cup of coffee I could grease it on no problem.

:rolleyes:
 
LVL 4 if memory serves on the Beech 1900 was selected in known icing conditions (ice accretion). Unlike the SAAB 340, we selected LVL 3 when it was +5 or less in visible moisture. LVL 3 included everything, but the boots. The 1900 could carry a pretty good load of ice and not have a measureable loss of performance. We'd blow the boots prior to the final approach fix, but if we were picking up ice inside the fix it wasn't a limitation to continue to the surface and I've done so during approaches in -FZRA.

Regards,

ex-Navy Rotorhead
 
Im not with Colgan but I think we blow at 1" than at FAF.


The 1900 training supplement says 1" to 1.5" should be allowed to form before attempting ice removal
 
There seems to be a big push by the NTSB to have pilots activate the boots at the first sign of ice. They just issued a safety notice:

http://ntsb.gov/alerts/SA_014.pdf

I know the ice bridging debate has been argued here in the past but it does seem like NTSB is really pushing this hard now. There was an article about it in the December issue of Prof. Pilots magazine and they claim that the first 1/4" of leading edge ice is the most dangerous.

Thoughts?
 
The reason I asked this question was because I flew with a Beech transition guy the other day. We were at around 16000 and were picking up ice, nothing special though. Normally at this temp we would be level 4 according to our ops. But the captain only had on the engine anti-ice.

He then asked for lower to get out of it and we went down to 12000 and passing through 14 we picked up moderate icing, still no boots. When we got to 12 the leading edge ice chipped away and cleared completely off. Not once were the boots run.

Its not that I have a problem with it, because if I did I would have spoken up. I was just wondering why he wouldn't follow the company ops, but figured it was a Beech thing. Then I come on here and learn about not having continuous in the Beech and how it can handle its ice.

I flew with another former Beech guy tonight who does the same thing, and wont run it in continuous.

I did find it interesting though that we landed with ice on the wipers, nose, props, prop hubs, and boots, but no other Saab had any of this and it was picked up during our final approach.
 
Felt like blowing the boots in the beech was more of giving you something new to look at.

The only time I've been a bit worried, we had pressurization mel'd, and forcast for mod. mixed 3000-12000ft. It was a whole lot more than that.. at Max cont. we were only pulling 180kts... climbs were only 500fpm. We def. had ice beyond the boots, engine inlets etc. There was prob. a good 5 in on the winglets.

I like to manually select it, so that i remember to watch, and see whats coming off... I am also less likely to forget and leave it on
 
the book tells us pretty clearly what to do in the saab. +5 and visible moisture boots go on until clear of conditions for 5 cycles of 15 min. Don't care what seat you are sitting in or the background of the pilot you are flying with, do what the book says.
 
If you're interested, there is an article about de-ice boots in this month's AeroSafety World (307 kB PDF), published by the Flight Safety Foundation.

In July 1999, the FAA cited the Comair [3272] accident and several other ice-related accidents in proposing rule making to revise the AFMs of 43 airplanes to "include requirements for activation of the airframe pneumatic deice boots ... at the first sign of ice accumulation [anywhere on the airplane or upon annunciation by an ice-detection system] to prevent reduced controllability due to adverse aerodynamic effects of ice adhering to the airplane prior to the firse deice cycle."
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Boot manufacturers, for example, said that they had been unable to reproduce ice briding under any wind tunnel or labratory conditions and that reports of ice briding they had investigated turned out to actually have involved residual or intercycle ice -- ice that remains on the boot after an inflation/deflation cycle and ice that accumulates between cycles.

"The general consensus of the workshop participants was that ice briding is not a problem for modern pneumatic deice boot designs," the FAA said.
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Minuteman said:
If you're interested, there is an article about de-ice boots in this month's AeroSafety World (307 kB PDF), published by the Flight Safety Foundation.
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Wind tunnels are great... But from what I've seen in the real world, if you blow the boots at the first sign of acumulation, it absolutly does not clear the wing. All you manage to do is change the ice from a clear, smooth layer, to a white, broken and rough layer. The only real bridging i've seen is when thin layers that didn't break away, remain on the wing. after more ice builds, the area that never cleared, will remain covered while the areas around it clear.

I think if you tell most of the colgan 1900 drivers up north that bridging does not occur in today's "modern" ariplanes, They would look at you funny, and ask if you believ in santa as well ;)
 
TUCKnTRUCK said:
I think if you tell most of the colgan 1900 drivers up north that bridging does not occur in today's "modern" ariplanes, They would look at you funny, and ask if you believ in santa as well ;)
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Exactly, let the ice build up, then blow the boots and get a clean break.
 
TUCKnTRUCK said:
The only time I've been a bit worried, we had pressurization mel'd, and forcast for mod. mixed 3000-12000ft. It was a whole lot more than that.. at Max cont. we were only pulling 180kts... climbs were only 500fpm. We def. had ice beyond the boots, engine inlets etc. There was prob. a good 5 in on the winglets.
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I remember that day, too! How many times did we both try to push the power up only to find we were at the torque limits at 180kts?! I have some great pictures from after we landed in BOS.

TUCKnTRUCK said:
I think if you tell most of the colgan 1900 drivers up north that bridging does not occur in today's "modern" ariplanes, They would look at you funny, and ask if you believ in santa as well ;)
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:yeahthat:
 
Teller1900 said:
I remember that day, too! How many times did we both try to push the power up only to find we were at the torque limits at 180kts?! I have some great pictures from after we landed in BOS.
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Prob. not as many times as i looked at you, wondering why the hell you were flying so slow ;)
 
drummerguy said:
the book tells us pretty clearly what to do in the saab. +5 and visible moisture boots go on until clear of conditions for 5 cycles of 15 min. Don't care what seat you are sitting in or the background of the pilot you are flying with, do what the book says.
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Sorry Im not flipping the boot switch with positive SAT. If there is no ice or the possibility of forming it then the boots are staying off. It's amazing how operating the saab for 20 years that way and suddenly there is a problem yet there has never been a crash in the US. The 2 reported stalls are people just getting too slow. Unfortunate part of not teaching people about ice is they think you flip the switch and forget about it. These are deice boots not anti ice. Until the FAA blames themselves and makes changes to airplanes like the 208 my boots are being used for the intended purpose of deice. The switch is above my head and it stays off until ice has accumulated.
 
These new "rules" on the SAAB for use of the de-ice boots are in response to an emergency AD from SAAB after some idiots at another airline let the airplane do a split-S after flying in moderate icing for a significant period of time without blowing the boots on autopilot. It really grates on my nerves to have the FAA trying to work their way further into my cockpit and protect us from ourselves, which is all this really is. Wait till the airplanes MEL'd for known icing starts to pile up!
 
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