I flew home at noon today, 2/3 of the flight in IMC between FL80 and FL110, with light icing for a couple of minutes at -3 C in FL110. Munich was VMC though (ceiling in 9000 feet and scattered to broken at 3000, light rain).
When I arrive a bit early at the airport the man at the GAT offered to call TWR and they simply moved my FPL back 30 minutes. All very simple and very friendly.
EDDC is a role model of what airports can be. I’d send delegation from all over Europe there to have a look.
One more which has been corrected for perspective, more or less
Got to have some sunsets too 
Can you believe they reconstructed the church from this? (Nice picture!)
Fun flight back
Not bad for ISA+5, but then I was well below MTOW. More pics later…
… I followed your trip over the whole weekend, wachting the great photos andwatching the brilliant weather really made me sad. Peter, I watched your trip back via the autorouter-tool, curious to learn what made you to turn that far to the South?
I’m guessing he wanted to prove that it was possible to get a VFR transit of Frankfurt
watching the brilliant weather really made me sad
Little as it helps, I know, you were not the only one!
The departure area wx was nice
but I knew this was just a temporary blessing The IR image for 0415Z showed some pretty high cloud, which was moving up to the NE
On that one I estimated the tops at FL250. Here is an image kindly captured by another pilot here, a bit later, showing tops guessed to be around FL200
The radar image showed a lot of convective wx although I tend to find this meteox.com image is limited to low levels, say below FL100
Sferics was clean so no obvious TS in there (although I did see a few strikes behind me enroute)
The GRAMET was almost meaningless. It got the cloud tops to the left of the route almost right but the horizontal extend of them was far bigger
This was another one I ran earlier; it got the tops right (c. FL210) but not the horizontal extent
Dresden
Climbing up
picked up 5-10mm of ice
but without much speed loss. The elevator got a good coating too, which is more hazardous
Eventually on top at FL140 or so
The stuff took a full 2 hours to sublimate away, in sunlight, at -15C to -22C.
The tops went up and up and here we are at FL200
What was impressive was that I got to FL200 and later to FL210 with about 2-3mm of the ice still in place, although by then it was pretty smooth. By the time I had to climb up from FL140, the very rough bits were gone.
The cannula and the MH O2D2 regulator worked well and I was getting 95% blood oxygen, but only if breathing very deliberately. So I pulled out the $400 MH mask which has the built-in mike and that gave me 99% immediately – a sea level oxygenation level. The mask had been used only once before, by a passenger with a blocked up nose. Not a pretty sight! It works however, even though the sound quality is poor
There is also an issue with the mask straps getting under the headset and creating an air gap which allows noise to get in. It took a bit of manipulation to make this work. One gets the same issue with glasses, but one can get glasses with very thin frames…
The damned Thuraya piece of crap phone again failed to pick up a connection, but fortunately power cycling it did the trick and fortunately it didn’t ask for another GPS fix which this phone can never (not even after any number of hours) get in a moving aircraft
I got the wx for the destination and alternates, in the $1 (I am a tight bastard)
The tops continued to rise over as far as one could see ahead so I climbed to FL210
One would not get airframe icing at -22C (in stratus cloud) but one would very likely get fuel servo icing unless the prop TKS was running the whole time, and the prop TKS tank lasts only about 2 hours… so it’s better to keep out of IMC. Plan B was a descent to FL070-080 which was below the 0C level – OK for Germany and Belgium on this route where the terrain is only 3k-4k feet. But that would have been a very rough flight, and what about flying into a TCU or worse when in IMC?
Near the end of Belgium, the stuff thinned out
and after KOK I started a descent. This is between layers at about FL80 but even there the cloud temps were -5C (+3C above the cloud!) so again instant icing could be expected, and sure enough I got it within seconds, but it didn’t matter because one was descending anyway
Final for Shoreham 02. The whole bit below the clouds was very bumpy, as it usually is under any SC kind of low level white fluffy stuff. There were gliders c. 3000ft to the NE of the airport… personally I would not do it that close, but Class G is Class G
Good to be back home and going for a walk on the South Downs, for a tea at a nice little cafe
Airborne time 5:10. Landed with 30.3 USG which is much less than the 43 USG on the way there – this is because of the long high altitude leg flown at “best power” – 2575rpm, 130F ROP. Plus some headwind…
Dresden is a great place to visit. It would make a good fly-in location. The boat trip especially was super.
BTW the reason for the dogleg to the SW was because of the high (and visibly convective) tops to the N of my route – as shown on the IR images. It went to about FL250. The stuff was moving off to my right, so routing to the left of it made sense. One could argue that waiting till later in the day was a good idea, but then we all know that any convective wx gets worse later in the day, so you always have this tradeoff. On the entire flight I could see the stuff growing in front of me…
So I pulled out the $400 MH mask which has the built-in mike and that gave me 99% immediately – a sea level oxygenation level.
I have flown quite a few hours with this mask on the C404. It really is the best option if you need oxygen on longer flights at high altitude.
And I think you did the right thing diverting around those build-ups. Your 5-10mm of ice could easily have grown to 30mm or more.
I suspect some of the “proper military” masks are better, being of soft rubber rather than the MH silicone one I have. But they are rare, and the mikes will be something nonstandard which will involve some circuitry to create an “inline insert” for the Bose headset cable which is what you get with the MH mask. There is no reason for the sound quality to be as bad as it is. I am doing a video which will show the difference.
Track logs:
Outbound:
Return:
