A very sobering story and accident.

It reminds me of an incident my wife and I encountered in our fairly newly flying IVP on the way home a few days after  LOBO in SC.  We were doing a leg from Houston, Pearland to Pueblo CO and we had initially flown NE twds Louisiana to avoid a WX system over Houston.  There was another system over the OK Panhandle and we again diverted to the NE to go around the leading edge of this system. I was maintaining VMC – in fact I think I was VFR on top at the time.  I think I was at  16,500 as I was trying to avoid the stronger headwinds higher.  I encountered what I thought was a thin and relatively small area of cloud ahead and thought I was well out of the moisture laden system so I asked for IFR altitude and was given same.  As soon as I entered this cloud layer I got swatted with rime ice on the windscreen and leading edge of the wings.  As someone else mentioned recently, I think IAS immediately dropped about 10 or 20 kts. 

I asked for deviation and was given,  looked out and there was about ¼ to ½” gnarly looking rime on the wings – all of it right at the apex.  I also asked for descent knowing temps were warmer below.  I got out of the cloud within a few seconds by turning right 90 degrees, but the ice was persistent.   As I recall it took a descent to 13,000 and OAT of  a couple degrees above zero before the ice was shed .  There had been a slight amount of sublimation when we first exited IMC but only minimal and I was surprised how long it took to get rid of all of it.  Probably it was a couple of minutes even though it felt longer. 

There was more reason than one that I elected to descend rather than climb but my only encounter with ice in this airplane made the choice fairly simple because I had no idea whether the airplane would successfully climb in this configuration with full power or not.  I just didn’t want to chance it – I think IAS was around 150 or 160 and I still have no idea how the airplane would behave with any further degradation of airspeed or with increased angle of attack. 

Anyone else have information to share about this kind of situation?

Thanks,
John Barrett

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