LeSving wrote:
And that is different from any other aircraft exactly how?
Are you serious? For one thing we were not discussing “any other aircraft”. We were discussing aircraft with laminar wing profiles.
JasonC wrote:
Freezing rain is supercooled large droplets which would turn to ice on striking your aircraft.
That is one interpretation of it, but is very rare. The common type is ordinary rain falling down into cooler (subzero air) and freezes in the instant it hits something, the ground usually, but could also be an aircraft that have been flying in that cold air.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Are you serious? For one thing we were not discussing “any other aircraft”. We were discussing aircraft with laminar wing profiles.
OK, I am discussing the Lancair 200/320/360 laminar airfoil with respect to what the narrator in the movie said about it in that video about 2:35 You get the impression (from the narrator) that the Lancair airfoil is particularly bad wrt icing compared with other aircraft because of the laminar airfoil. That is simply not the case. The Lancair airfoil isn’t just “any other laminar airfoil”. NASA made this airfoil specifically to work perfectly well with no laminar flow at all. It’s like a 6 series NACA airfoil, only better. It’s better when the flow IS laminar, but also better when the flow is 100% turbulent, for instance due to leading edge icing. The wing is what makes the Lancair an exceptional airplane. What is “wrong” with it, is the size. It’s very small.
Having seen the video again, my impression is the pilot knows exactly what he is doing. He does everything right (from my point of view). Always ahead of the plane, and the narration just sounds weirder. I’m not exactly sure why he didn’t just fly VFR below the clouds, but that is his decision. Maybe he wanted some sunlight, or maybe he wanted more fun? Both are very understandable to me. He was prepared for the worst case scenario, and that was flying home commercially.
I think the video is made up for educational purposes. As the narrator talks about declaring an emergency, the overcast really is only BKN and it is very obvious to the eye that the layer is thin. Screenshot upload not working. But it is at 09:34
Maybe you are posting from a phone or an Ipad, Flyingfish, and have not enabled the extra editing features in your profile. But I am posting the 9:34 screenshot below:
Flyingfish wrote:
I think the video is made up for educational purposes
This video is an advertising video for the whole series called Real World From Coast to Coast. Its purpose is clearly educational and the choice to have a narrator is to create sense to what they want to explain to the pilot and cannot clearly be seen in the video. By the way, as a long-time subscriber of their excellent web products (IFR Mastery is a scenario-based workshop with one scenario each month coming out – See here) I identified the narrator as being Jeff Van West (who is also the author of a book called Microsoft Flight Simulator for Pilots). You see, these guys do some instruction/education of the so called average private pilot.
Example
As said earlier in this thread their website is here Pilotworkshop
Everything they do is planned in advance and aims for a precise topic. I presume this was the case here either. They use up to 3 GoPro (harness, headband, fixed) and 2 laptops on board (for the recording of the iPad with ForeFlight).
I think they write the story first and then go out flying to get the images which would fit their purpose and show what they want to demonstrate. It is not a testimony of a real life event which would have been edited afterwards to tell what happened. That is why the images do not fit 100% to what they are supposed to show.
I recommend to check out their educating effort. Seemed commendable to me as yet.
In that case, sorry to say, it is truly dumb to be educating people that 13,000ft without oxygen, between converging cloud layers, etc, is a great idea.
I flew with one pilot (an instructor actually; I was an IR student at the time, 12 years ago) who refused the oxygen cannula I offered him and at FL120 could not read the instruments. We were in Eurocontrol airspace, IFR, icing conditions below, a 700nm flight. His vision was restored within seconds of being on oxygen. And I would say his physical condition was no worse than the average private pilot, especially a US private pilot.
IMHO a lot of pilots will have really crap decisionmaking at 13,000ft without oxygen. I recommend reading the 2nd post here and the article linked in there. That pilot was at 14,000ft and was sticking his hand out of the little window trying to scrape the ice off the wing.
Especially dumb to be doing this in an aircraft which can go to FL250 or so.
Setting aside the “icing conditions” aspect, it is really dumb to be flying between tight layers like this, because you are closing doors behind you. Really dumb doing it VFR and almost as dumb doing it IFR.
Sure this pilot is good at it because he probably does it all the time, but producing a relatively slick video doesn’t make it a smart way to manage a flight.
Thanks Peter. I was posting from a Mac.
OK so now we know don’t need to get all wound up about this video. Certainly the goal of making people talk and think (you pick the order!) is achieved.
And a disclosure about 02: I am a healthy (I think) 55 year old and need O2 as low as FL090 if it is a long flight.
I can fly without, but I feel MUCH better with and I can recall a couple of lousy landings after long flights without.
Peter wrote:
it is really dumb to be flying between tight layers like this, because you are closing doors behind you. Really dumb doing it VFR and almost as dumb doing it IFR.
It seemed to me they tried to explain that you have to get out of it without hesitation, as soon as practical, and show ways to do that precisely. But I’m not sure if I understood everything on my first viewing. I would not retain anything for myself about the VFR/IFR aspect because this seemed to me very closely related to American standards (VFR over the top against VFR on top). But even this is worth discussing.
The comment saying solely that oxygen is required after 30 minutes (legally spoken) at that altitude is in fact not enough. It should have been said that this is not a good idea to do that all. Or they should have said that they did it for demonstration purposes only even this would be like taking your car just to corner of your street without tightening your seatbelt saying that this is just for a short distance. You won’t do that either.
Flyingfish wrote:
Certainly the goal of making people talk and think (you pick the order!) is achieved.
This is completely true for me. Great thread!
How people react to altitude is very indvidual, and thankfully EASA has realised this and relaxed the oxygen requirements in Part-NCO.
I have myself found that my personal limit is FL120. I can fly up there for a couple of hours without being affected other than feeling tired afterwards. I would however not go any higher without O2. I have heard of smokers being perfectly fine (as passengers) way higher than that. Apparently they are accustomed to being oxygen starved 
