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I always wondered why Cirrus would put Deice capability on their airframe and leave the gear hanging in the ice field? Seems to me it would accumulate quite a bit of ice and thus more weight, drag, etc. hmmm? Seems like a conflict of interest.

Not sure why, but the gear on a FIKI Cirrus gets almost no ice.

Tim

Prop slinger likely coats it some.

And the idea that weight of ice matters is a fallacy. 5 gallons of ice on each landing gear would total all of 80 lbs. ice matters because it impairs airfoils, not because of weight.

Ice is mostly a problem on the prop, lift producing and control surfaces. Some barons dont deice the wing inboard of the engines, it produces so little lift that a couple lbs of ice are no problem. Caravans with TKS deice the struts but not the tires.

I don't agree that it is a fallacy. Many years ago, we landed with a Cessna 310-C that had boots and an alky prop and it was covered with more ice than I had ever seen before. Tremendous parasitic drag. We parked the airplane outside so the ice wouldn't melt and since the FBO owned the airplane, we decided to weigh it for kicks. We had 1100 lbs of ice accretion. Please don't suggest the weight of ice is not a problem. Even though the wings and prop can be clear, the weight combined with the parasitic drag can overwhelm an airplane. Been there-done that.

Your statement suggests to me that you have very little experience in actual icing conditions.

Perhaps in extreme cases an entire airframe coated in ice has meaningful accretion ... But gear isn't the place.

Charles, I have accreted perhaps a softball size or larger of ice on the tips while the TKS kept the wings and prop completely ice free. With additional ice on the leading edges of all other appurtenances, I have lost 20 KIAS in the Bonanza.

That puts me that much closer to the stalling speed if things worsen. The increased angle of attack now accelerates ice accretion on the bottom of the wing lacking TKS. Kind of like flying in icing with flaps at approach.

While deformation of the leading edge of the lifting surfaces is perhaps the #1 disadvantage of ice, parasitic drag and the weight are second. and shouldn't be underestimated. It doesn't have to be extreme. It is a sliding scale just as accretion of ice on leading edge.

That's hard to understand. Useful in my G5 SR22T, FIKI, AC, Stormscope, etc. is 1098. I don't know how you could get it as low as 836.

Cirrus just bumped the initial flap speed from 119 to 150 on the G5. Should help!

Tony,

Your gross weight is 200#'s higher. This airplane was very decked out. It had infrared even.

A softball has a 12" circumference, which would give it roughly a 4" diameter and 2" radius (about 5 cm).
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_s ... l_softball

The volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi* radius cubed. Simplifying to 4 * radius cubed gives a softball a volume of 500cm squared. Two of those is 1000cm2 or roughly one liter which is 2.2 lbs of water. I could do a similar calculation for drag and suspect I'd find a similarly trivial effect.

An airplane flies because it's propeller provides thrust and the wing provides life. THAT is where ice really hurts. Weight and drag are an insignificant contribution in almost all cases.

So far my SR22T is as fast as my A36TN.

They have the bang & fluff sound.... The gear is only for takeoff. Cirrus pilots land mostly on parachute.

Some spend 140 AMU's to install a little bigger engine on a 55 Baron to go 5kts faster. Speed matters to a few.