Pitot heating and airframe de-icing
 

I just thought that this photograph was worth sharing.

I took it last week, the inlet is a special one on a research aeroplane, and critically is not de-iced in any way. The big bit is the scientific inlet and a couple of inches in diameter, the smaller bit on the left is a pitot and around half an inch in diameter.

This was after an entertaining handful of hours mucking about between surface and FL300 off the Hebrides.

Needless to say, anything flight safety critical on that aeroplane IS de-iced! It is not hard to visualise what would happen to this, or any other, aeroplane if the main flying surfaces weren't.

G

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...86253555_n.jpg

Interesting photograph there. Did you have visual of the thingy from the cockpit while flying? At what altitude/temp did you start to see the ice accumulation?

Even if this is only scientific equipment, how much time and money was wasted by having the probes ice up in the middle of a test run?

I don't know when the icing started I'm afraid. The LTI (low turbulence inlet) is directly above the cockpit. The particular thingy isn't used for cloud work, it had just been left fitted.

However, you're right, loss of data due to icing is a big headache. Most instrumentats we can and do de-ice, but a few can be a real headache. The worst is a turbulence probe on the radome - electrical heating would interfere with the radar and chemical de-icing would muck up the chemistry instruments behind it. We do often lose data from that one.

G