PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Insect debris on leading edge
View Single Post
Old 5th Dec 2019, 19:49
  #12 (permalink)  
India Four Two
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Manchester MAN
Posts: 6,644
Received 74 Likes on 46 Posts
I spend a lot of time at low altitudes, towing gliders and in the summer time, this means a lot of cleaning of the leading edges of the prop blades and the wings. Probably not much impact in performance on a draggy power plane, but significant on gliders, as PDR1 mentioned. I remember reading about flight testing, where small squares of masking tape were stuck onto glider leading edges and the polar measured. Degradation was of the order of 10%.

I've had an ASI failure due to a mudwasp nest in a Cessna pitot tube. A tow pilot in my club had an instantaneous ASI failure due to a well-aimed bee strike!


India Four Two is offline