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Old 23rd October 2006 | 10:28
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IO540
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From: EuroGA.org
The TB20/TB21 are available with TKS de-ice. The full system costs about £20k; a prop-only de-ice is about £3k. Not cheap but the full system is highly effective - until the TKS fluid runs out...

There are new developments on the electric front. I believe Lancair are doing something with heating the leading edges, and they have a separate 70 amp (at 24V, I assume) alternator to power it.

Electrically heated props have been around for decades but the wings etc have traditionally (on piston and turboprop aircraft) been done by rubber boots. Jets tend to use bleed air to de-ice the leading edges, but if you are going fast enough the aerodynamic heating prevents icing pretty effectively.

The name of the game in IFR flight planning is to get up into VMC and stay there. Nobody wants to sit in freezing IMC for hours. With full TKS you can do it but if you use up more than 50% of your fluid then your flight planning for the return journey gets somewhat compromised. Same with oxygen actually... one can't get refills in Europe, in general. Also, if sitting in IMC you don't get a chance of avoiding vertical cloud development visually.

Nothing in aviation is "cheap" especially if you are talking about IFR. One could do low priced products for the Permit market but they are limited to VFR only so ...
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