Quote:
As a result I usually taxi with carb heat on, just for fun!!! regardless of the time of year.
That's a pretty bad idea. The air you select with carb heat goes in unfiltered, so any bit of crud lying around will get sucked into the intake. It also effectively enriches the mixture, increasing the risk of plug fouling.
Our Robin with an 0-200 is an 'ice-maker' so we are very careful, especially when we've been parked on wet grass. But the one to beat them all was the VW engine we had on the Turbulent. We seemed to spend most of the time with carb heat on, esp on the ground.
Since then I have been paranoid about ensuring we check for ice regularly, having had the engine stopped in flight a few times through icing.
What I find really interesting is when I fly with other pilots with little experience of icing. They occasionally think of using carb heat and even then for no more than 5-10 seconds. Doing that in my Robin, they would have a nasty shock!!!!