Nice day in Michigan

lilrkt

New Member
Well I participated in Operation Good Cheer here today. All the planes from my flight school went down to KPTK and met up with over 50 other planes. They packed every plane full of presents, and groups of planes went to about 15 locations around Michigan and dropped off the presents to a waiting army of volunteers unloading planes. This is all put on by Child and Family Services of Michigan. They do it every year and I think it's a great thing. Planes ranged from a Musketeer, to a Cutlass that I was flying, to a few Citations. All were filled to the gills.

The part that was the most fun for me was the weather here today. We were full IFR with moderate icing going from Flint to Pontiac. Landing there I was sporting about a quarter inch of ice that I chunked off. Our destination turned out to be KHYX in Saginaw. When landing there I chunked off about 1/2 to 3/4 inch of ice. All this for my first time really out on my own in actual IMC. Not a bad experience. After unloading in Saginaw, the weather had broken up and it was a nice short VFR flight back to Flint to put the plane to bed. All the planes that we flew had wo people, but unfortunately the guy flying with me was only a student pilot, not rated in the RG so I had lots of fun on my own with no GPS and a DME that was not working. Had lots of fun though!
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Thats a great program. I work at KAZO and we were supposed to have about 30-40 aircraft coming in today. I'll find out on Monday how many showed up, but I am sure it was alot since the weather was pretty nice. I can just see the smiles on the faces of all those kids receiving those gifts.
 
Kudos for helping with a fun and worthwhile cause!
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The part that was the most fun for me was the weather here today. We were full IFR with moderate icing going from Flint to Pontiac. Landing there I was sporting about a quarter inch of ice that I chunked off. Our destination turned out to be KHYX in Saginaw. When landing there I chunked off about 1/2 to 3/4 inch of ice. All this for my first time really out on my own in actual IMC. Not a bad experience.

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I hope you had some kind of alternate plan available to get out of the icing. Ice in Michigan can load up quicker than you'd believe.

Here are some of the questions that I'd be thinking if I were in your shoes yesterday: How low are the ceilings? Can I get to clear air underneath the clouds, or am I stuck in them until I let down on the approach? Tops are how high? How thick is the layer? How quickly can this plane climb to clear on-top when it's picking up ice at a moderate pace or more? Can I even climb more than a thousand feet with ice accumulating? Where are VFR conditions?

I don't have a big problem with small forays into IFR (possible icing) conditions in planes with no ice equipment only as long as there are safe and quick ways out of potential bad situations. If ya gotta learn about ice, be very,very careful. Take someone with you that has ice experience, and always have an "out".
 
We thought long and hard about the ice before we even went to the planes. Weh we did go out, it was understood that if there were any problems, were were to turn around and land. We had the owner of the school and head instructor in the first plane followed by six of us in similar Cessnas including two more instructors. We wree as prepared as we could be. Including knowing where tops and bottoms were and communicating locations of layers to eachother and ATC while in flight. It did make me a bit nervous at times but I never felt in danger.
 
Thats really cool, sounds like an interesting flight! Maybe I can talk the boss into using his plane for that next year.

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Ice in Michigan can load up quicker than you'd believe.


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Heh, ice in any of the Great Lakes is like that. Last week coming back from Detroit, I crossed Lake Erie mostly on top, but had to descend over the lake through about 2600 ft. of clouds. Talk about ice...holy crap. Went from no ice, no clouds north of the lake, to a bunch of mixed ice (1/2 an inch or so) in the couple of minutes that it took to descend through the 2600 ft. or so of cloud that was over the lake. No way I'd have made the flight that way (would've gone around the lake at a lower altitude) if I didn't have a good out, but it wasn't a huge deal because bases were over 1500 AGL, and even if they weren't, I could get back on top and head behind me, where it was clear skies and unlimited vis, then descend and go around the lake where the clouds were higher and thinner and there was reportedly less ice. Ahh...gotta love the Great Lakes in winter time.
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