Helicopter Check Ride Part 12 Aircraft Icing

Aug 17, 2017

Helicopter Check Ride Part 12 Aircraft Icing

Chapter 12: Helicopter Icing

      I want to give you a few examples of things I have seen over the years. The first thing one was when I was a younger pilot, a newer pilot, and we were going on a news call. They were calling for possible icing conditions later in the day. Thinking back now, I know what a stupid move I made. We get a call to go south of the city where I was flying. I am looking at the weather and thinking, “Well the icing isn’t for several hours yet. This is an accident, we will go out and shoot this accident, and we will get back in plenty of time before these icing conditions start.”

      We are pulling the helicopter out and the line guy who was fueling us was also a camera operator. He had been flying for years in the helicopter, so he had a good sense of what goes on around the airport, especially with flights and different things involving aircraft. When we were pulling the helicopter out he looks at the sky, looks at me and we felt like a sprinkle or two. As he gives me a strange look, and I say, “Yeah I know, icing is not supposed to happen until later.”

Helicopter Check Ride Part 12 Aircraft Icing

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     Hindsight being 20/20, I should have never even left. Being a young pilot, and kind of cocky I guess, I decided I could get out there and if we start to get into something, I can just turn around and come back.

      We take off, we get flying to the south and the cloud layer starts coming down, the visibility is coming down, and there is some rain on the window. It does not take long before I figure out those raindrops are not moving up the windshield. Quickly I realize that it has turned into ice.

      I turned around and started heading back home. However, before we can get back it gets bad enough that I can barely see out the front windshield. We get over a big field and I make some right-hand circles so I can look out the side window and I land. We try to decide what to do, we scraped the window clean, and there was a little airport like a mile or two away. We decided to hop on over to this airport and just make sure we were not using excessive power. 

      Again, being cocky, I should have just stayed in the field. We made it over to this little airport and the aircraft ends up sitting outside for 3 days. Everybody was fine. We did not get hurt. Nothing bad happened, but then there is the embarrassment of people asking, "Well why did you go out anyway? You knew there was icing forecast for later in the day."

      I did not get in trouble. The boss was cool about it and said, "Well, at least you landed and nobody got hurt, but use your brain next time."

      That was my first experience that really made me think about how you really cannot mess around with icing. It is scary when your windshield starts icing up and all of the sudden you realize you cannot see. It happens so fast, and it is just how people get themselves into bad situations.

Helicopter Check Ride Part 12 Aircraft Icing

      This next story, same thing, I am still flying the jet ranger. I am flying for a place in Northern Ohio. We go down to West Virginia to get maintenance and we had to wait a day or two for the helicopter to be finished. When the helicopter is done and we are getting ready to head back, it starts snowing outside. It was not heavy snow, but it is snowing and I did not think anything about it.

      The visibility is good, and of course, I am being pressured from the person I was working for to get the aircraft back home. He is paying for our motel, paying us, and wants to get the aircraft home, as any operator would. The aircraft is done and we are getting ready to go.

      This person walks up to me, who had an office there, and used to work for Bell Helicopter. He says, "Are you sure you're going to want to take off in this?"

      Being a young pilot, and new to the Jet Ranger, I say, "Well why not? It's just a little bit of light snow."

      He says, "Well do you have a snow kit? Do you have the baffle kit?"

      I replied "No." 

      He proceeds to tell me about the snow baffle kit for the Jet Ranger. This company I work for, we did not even have one. People just went out, flew in the snow, and did not think anything about it. He then tells me how many years he worked for Bell helicopter. He had an impressive resume.

      Then he says, "I know you are feeling the pressure to fly because I know the guy you are working for, and you know what? I’m going to call him myself, because I don’t think you should go," and once he explained the snow kit, and the need for it to me, I agreed. We decided to stay. He calls my employer and says, "Hey, I’ve encouraged these guys to stay put for tonight and come back home tomorrow."  So that was my introduction to snow baffles. 

      My last story is an example from my career as an EMS pilot. After having a couple of first-hand scares, then learning a little more about the dangers of icing and exactly what this bulletin was talking about, I move into the EMS world. By this point I’m pretty respectful of the whole icing thing and any time the temperature is really close to freezing, I was not afraid to turn down flights because the temperature is close to freezing. It can get you in trouble when it is close to freezing. Well yeah, it is 35 degrees on the ground, but as we go up on altitude the weather gets colder, and you can get icing prior to the temperature reaching 32 degrees.

      I can think of two instances specifically where I turned down a flight due to possible icing. We had light rain. It was close to freezing and I said, “No I’m not going to take it.” 

      I took some flak from the companies I was working for, but the interesting note is on both of those flights, after I turned them down, another company who accepted the flight had to land in a field; one by a landfill, one out in the boonies somewhere.

       So that gave me the confidence in being able to say, you know what, it is close to freezing I am not taking it. I am not accepting the flight. I am not going.

      At the last EMS place I was working, the lead pilot was about my age. He flew in the military and was a very sharp individual, but there was one night where the temperature was around 35, we had light rain, and I turned down a flight. The next day he said, “Oh, why did you turn that flight down last night?”

      I said, "It was 35 degrees and possibly going to drop a little bit."

      He replied, “Awe there’s no problem at 35 degrees!”

      I am thinking, "Okay, well, the temperature drops 3.5 degrees every 1,000 feet in elevation. You go up, it gets colder. We are flying at least at 1,000 feet at night AGL," so I was not sure why he was questioning me about not taking that flight.

Helicopter Check Ride Part 12 Aircraft Icing

      A fellow pilot I was working with was an ex-coast guard pilot and I asked him about it, and he said, “Are you crazy? 35 degrees and raining, no way! I would not have taken it either.”  So just to give you an idea that some people are brave and bold, some are conservative. 

      This same individual and a person I talked about in a previous example; both were very experienced EMS pilots. Both were repeatedly going out and getting themselves in icing conditions, making them land in screwball places, staying at hospitals somewhere because they got into icing. Icing is a big deal. It is something you have to be thinking about all year long. Icing is something we need to review consistently along with everything else.

      We do not just learn certain things in helicopter training and then never need to review it again. It involves constant training, training again, and retraining ourselves, teaching these same lessons to ourselves over and over and over. I can tell you, no matter where you are flying or what you are doing; news reporting, EMS, the list goes on and on; there are always pressures. Outside pressures, your own pressures you are putting on yourself, pressure from other pilots; you just have to have the guts to be conservative, make the right choices, and go with what you think is right.

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Helicopter Check Ride Part 12 Aircraft Icing

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