Simulating Icing Conditions

[pilotpop]

Hello All!
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for trouble or danger in order to deliberately wreck an aircraft. I was just wondering if it is possible to simulate icing conditions and actually get the aircraft to ice up in FS2004? I'm a pilot in real life as well as an avid Sim pilot and I just want to try to experience as many conditions as I can in FS2004. I've had no luck noticing any performance degradation flying into what should be ideal icing conditions. Obviously, I would rather experience icing on my computer than on my real airplane!
Thanks for any tips.
Mike R.

[zfehr]

FS2004 only simulates pitot icing and carb icing, let's hope FSX might include more realism. FlyII which I still use does and is a good six years old now so it is possible.

[Rockcliffe]

Icing was simulated in FS2002. Fly in the clouds with icing conditions set and you will soon find yourself at full power and full up trim just to maintain altitude.
I haven't tried it in FS9, however.
Blair
CYOW

[NonCon]

There was a White Paper on the subject, written by, believe it or not, the US Navy. Long story short, fs2002 ignores all icing except pitot/carb, in fs2004 there is some lift degradation (although I've yet to see it). Also Pete "FSUIPC" Dowson I believe said the same thing a couple years ago.

You can find the white paper doing a search on FS2002 Icing.



KJ

[ronzie]

I've experienced structural icing problems resulting in at least lift degredation. I was taxiing in sleet and when I took off in this Saab 340B model it was slow and heavy stalling outside of ground effect.

I repeated this with structural deicing on during taxi (not usually performed in the real world but I have not seen any FS deicing stations), turned it off just before the take-off roll to reduce thrust reduction, then back on a few hundred feet AGL where I could lower the nose to accommodate the reduced thrust, still in sleet, and did not have problems.

[Rockcliffe]

Works in FS9 too.
Set a low 8/8 cloud cover with severe icing. Fly into the clouds with a C172, for example. Set the AP for level flight in the icing conditions.
It doesn't take long until you're on the back of the power curve and eventually you'll crash.
I just tested it myself. Unfortunately, you don't see anything on the wings, but there is a definite degradation of performance.
Cheers
Blair
CYOW

edit: Pitot icing is modelled, as most of us have found out, but carb icing is not. It's happened to me in x-plane though.

[Iceman07]

It definitly works in FS9. Last week, when we (here in the Northeast) were having a storm with heavy, wet snow, zero visibility with pockets of freezing rain, I did a flight from Barnes (KBAF) to Bradley (KBDL) and used real-world weather in the default Caravan. At Barnes, when I took off, it was zero/zero with heavy snow. Even with deicers on, the take off was interesting, to say the least.

[zfehr]

Well, I guess you are right :o I have never had a realistic encounter with icing in the sim but then again I use the sim like I do in real life and don't stick around when icing conditions are encountered. From what I have read you have to stay in the icing conditions for quite some time for them to take effect (not necessarily realistic) and of course no visible accumulation. Until they can work out the visual representation it's nothing more than a novelty in the flight dynamics. Hopefully FSX will improve on this so that it can be used as a learning tool.

[cianpars]

One of Bill Lyons Pipers has icing if I remember correctly. You can see the ice build up onthe wings in the right conditions.

I think it was his PA 23 recently released as freeware.

IAN