PICPaul
Well-Known Member
Quick preface to this question, I'm a rookie pilot with 165 VFR hours, own a C150, and live in a village with no other pilots to ask this question of. I know the book answer to this, I am looking for what experience has taught other northern aviators.
We had a wicked ice storm over the weekend. I had wing and tail covers on and they were fully saturated with rain, which then froze very quickly as the rain segued into heavy snow which served to compress the covers into the forming ice making for the most tenacious ice I've seen on my plane in 2 AK winters tied down outside.
W/O any running water, electricity, nor glycol on hand at the apron, I was able to scrape a bunch of ice off my wings and tail. I also positioned the aircraft so that the sun hit it with max intensity. Unfortunately, the sun never did put out enough energy to melt the ice.
After 2 hours of work and with the sun going down, I realized I wasn't going to get all the ice off. I decided to scrub.
So, the question is, keeping in mind my C150 doesn't have quite the HP many of you are used to in order to power through problems, was I wimpy or wise to scrub my flight with this amount of ice?
We had a wicked ice storm over the weekend. I had wing and tail covers on and they were fully saturated with rain, which then froze very quickly as the rain segued into heavy snow which served to compress the covers into the forming ice making for the most tenacious ice I've seen on my plane in 2 AK winters tied down outside.
W/O any running water, electricity, nor glycol on hand at the apron, I was able to scrape a bunch of ice off my wings and tail. I also positioned the aircraft so that the sun hit it with max intensity. Unfortunately, the sun never did put out enough energy to melt the ice.
After 2 hours of work and with the sun going down, I realized I wasn't going to get all the ice off. I decided to scrub.
So, the question is, keeping in mind my C150 doesn't have quite the HP many of you are used to in order to power through problems, was I wimpy or wise to scrub my flight with this amount of ice?