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Old 28th Feb 2016, 19:59
  #28 (permalink)  
Pull what
 
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Some poor understanding of icing, ice and frost in the some of the above posts.

Car deicier is not an approved fluid for use on an aircraft, it is also not an anti ice, nor do you know what its holdover time is. It may well get rid of the ice but you are introducing a water based fluid onto the wing and you have no idea what will happen to that fluid in sub zero temperatures apart from at some stage it will refreeze.

I do not agree that frost can form on an aircraft in flight. The many references I can find to the formation of frost refer to calm, still, or static air being necessary for formation. My experience over four decades of Canadian winter flying has never shown "frost" forming on a moving plane - only on a motionless one, in calm air.
Frost can form on and around cold soaked fuel tanks underneath the wings after high altitude flight . Certainly very common on all the jet types I have flown especially after a rapid descent and it does form in the air not just magically after touchdown!

On two types I flew you had to do an overwing tactile test before flight in temps below 6 degs. Note -overwing only.

Attempting to take of with hoar frost on the wings makes you a test pilot or just an idiot-good luck.

https://assets.digital.cabinet-offic...2004_N90AG.pdf

So my question is: would this accumulation of very light frost be of any consequence? We're not talking about heavy ice forming, just very very thin, light frost. (perhaps even lighter than what can be seen on your car in the morning after a frosty night)
One of the problems with hoar frost, not understood by many pilots, is that if the same amount of top surface frost could (and it cant) form in the cruise the aircraft may well be perfectly flyable due to the ample margin above the stall speed. However during the low speed transition from lift off to climb speed, with a much lower margin above the stall speed caused by the ice, the pilot may experience a stall and loss of control, the other danger is that the stall characteristics in such a stall may be unconventional or more marked that a normal stall.

Last edited by Pull what; 28th Feb 2016 at 20:36.
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