Does anyone remove wheel pants for winter ops?

[John_RV4]

Dean,
If you're still flying THIS winter, my hat is off to you. This is the first year that I have just punted the winter entirely. To answer your question though, I try hard to avoid those conditions and have not removed the wheel pants in winter. But even in a "good" year, I don't fly much in Jan/Feb.

Looks like most of the fixed gear rentals that are flying right now are doing so without wheel pants FWIW.

John KLWM

P.S. I drove into the North ramp Sunday and the EAA hangar can not be seen from the taxiway behind all the snow piles......

[voodoonav]

Yesterday I landed on 2 inches of loose snow, which slowed the RV6A like an arrestor cable. I then had to use considerable power to taxi off the runway and to my parking space.

This morning I removed the cone of the nose wheel pant, revealing very packed snow. I used my kerosene heater to free it up, which only took a few minutes.

It seems the nose pant acts like a scoop and rams the snow sufficiently to stop the nosewheel from rotating at all; did not seem to affect the mains.

Lesson: landing on hard snow or ice is not a problem, but loose snow certainly is.

[N941WR]

Originally Posted by Geico266

... Some of the best flying is after a light snow of 1-2". It's fun to do T&G's and come around and try to land in your tracks. That is a challenge that is hard to do.

Back when the 152 was a new airplane and I was getting my PPL my instructor used make me do that. Well, try to do that. Great practice and you immediately see how good you are.

[Flying EMT]

I removed mine for a while and am going to put them back on. The slush, dirt and ice thrown all over the wing was worrying me as to disrupting the air flow. I'm in a heated hangar so overnight freezes don't concern me. I do a soft field landing if I suspect there might be frozen wheel(s) from a wet take-off. - Ben

[Fred.Stucklen]

Originally Posted by voodoonav

Yesterday I landed on 2 inches of loose snow, which slowed the RV6A like an arrestor cable. I then had to use considerable power to taxi off the runway and to my parking space.

This morning I removed the cone of the nose wheel pant, revealing very packed snow. I used my kerosene heater to free it up, which only took a few minutes.

It seems the nose pant acts like a scoop and rams the snow sufficiently to stop the nosewheel from rotating at all; did not seem to affect the mains.

Lesson: landing on hard snow or ice is not a problem, but loose snow certainly is.

This year, I took the wheel pants OFF. Last year, I left them ON as we didn't have much snow. This year, we've had six feet of snow since Christmas!
I went flying last weekend, after the hanger got plowed out. Nice to have short wings as the tips were quite close to the snow banks along the taxiways.
And it's snowingg again today - 8"-12" expected, followed by freezing rain tomorrow. 7B6 may not get cleaned up for the weekend....

[smokyray]

When I lived in SD I flew year round "pants on". I kept a bucket of 50/50 antifreeze in the hangar and a spray bottle, just apply liberally pre and post flight squirted underneath. Snow and slush won't stick, at least while its wet!

Smokey