on flying with polished ice on your wing

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Originally Posted by pstaney

I've seen in FAR 91 type flying the practice of accepting loose snow on the wing, believe it will always blow off on take off. May be true in cases of dry snow, I'm not so sure that when it gets a bit wet, or sticky, this will happen. So I've found that blowing gently on the snow on the wing, or just flicking it with a finger, seems to be the sensible test. If it readily repositions itself well away or completely off the wing, seems sensible to take off. If it at all just moves over a bit, and stops, then it filts definition of adhering.

The wording of the FAR addresses snow "adhering" to the wing. Has there been any clarification on exactly what adhering has meant?

Before anyone jumps in admonishing me for not using common sense, I only pose the question because I KNOW pilots different opinions on what adhering is meant to imply.

Twenty years ago a Chief Pilot of mine killed himself one night doing this. Ironically after warning us young’ns not to do it.

Yea, the snow will probably blow off. And in his case it did. Just not symmetrically. He died when the airplane violently rolled after rotation.

The only time this "adhering" argument has any reason to even exist is in very, very light snow in very, very cold temperatures when wind is keeping anything from accumulating. In other words, when the airplane is clean.