Van's Air Force
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Heated Pitot
- Thread starter casper
- Start date
terrykohler
Well Known Member
Not required. However, even in spring and fall, a good deal of IFR flight is carried out above 10,000 feet agl in order to stay above most weather. If you consider lapse rate along with surface temperatures below 50F, you stand a good chance of picking up ice with any moisture present. An OAT would be a very good investment as well.
Terry
Terry
Norman CYYJ
Well Known Member
In Canada it is required for night flight and IFR.
frankh
Well Known Member
not required
But I did have mine freeze over in IFR...It thawed out time I got down. I do have a heated pitot now.
Personally I would be more worried about the fuel tank vents freezing over, although less likely unless you have made them into a pitot like device.
Frank 7a
But I did have mine freeze over in IFR...It thawed out time I got down. I do have a heated pitot now.
Personally I would be more worried about the fuel tank vents freezing over, although less likely unless you have made them into a pitot like device.
Frank 7a
AX-O
Well Known Member
Look at post number 7 on this link. Click here.
gmcjetpilot
Well Known Member
No
My advice and opinion is, if you're an occasional stratus penetration, on climb out or let down, than may be leave the heat off. If you are a VFR pilot dreaming of being an IFR pilot, leave the heat off and put some wires in the wing for future possible upgrade.
Heat is not needed and you can do lots of IFR flying with out a heated pitot.
YOU CAN'T FLY IN KNOWN ICE, right. That is totally illegal and dangerous. The courts have already ruled and set precedence. You get into ice and have to declare any kind of crisis or emergency, plan on being violated and losing your certificate for at least a while, that is if you survive.
So why have heated pitot when you cant fly in ice conditions (of any kind) legally. Well of course we all pick up trace ice sometimes in cloud, and the pitot is one of the more ice prone parts of the airframe, but to be blocked totally, you have to fly in at least light / moderate ice for some time period. There is no magic or mystery, if you are in **visible mosture (eg cloud) and below freezing temps you can get ice. Stay out of visible mosture and in temps above freezing (or -40F) than airframe icing is a zero issue. So to re-cap stay out of clouds, freezing drizzle or rain in freezing temps, no ice.
Losing your airspeed would be a bummer but with GPS we do have a cool back up, ground speed. 20 years ago there where few GPS/Loran and DME was an exotic option in may GA planes, so on-board ground speed was not a common tool available to GA pilots.
Not saying heated pitot is useless, but it's should be useless to a VFR pilot and almost useless to a light IFR pilot. Hard core IFR and ice in a little single engine plane, heated pitot or not, is a "bad thing".
** Visiable mosture is defined by visabilites below 3 miles. Fog, clouds, rain, mist, drizzle and standing water on the airport ramp are all considered visable mosture. However if the temp is not below 0C than ice is not an issue.
No and if you lost your pitot you have GPS ground speed. If you really are a hard core IFR pilot and plan solid IFR flying in a parts of the country more prone to ice (although ice can occur anywhere) than put the pitot heat in.casper said:
My advice and opinion is, if you're an occasional stratus penetration, on climb out or let down, than may be leave the heat off. If you are a VFR pilot dreaming of being an IFR pilot, leave the heat off and put some wires in the wing for future possible upgrade.
Heat is not needed and you can do lots of IFR flying with out a heated pitot.
YOU CAN'T FLY IN KNOWN ICE, right. That is totally illegal and dangerous. The courts have already ruled and set precedence. You get into ice and have to declare any kind of crisis or emergency, plan on being violated and losing your certificate for at least a while, that is if you survive.
So why have heated pitot when you cant fly in ice conditions (of any kind) legally. Well of course we all pick up trace ice sometimes in cloud, and the pitot is one of the more ice prone parts of the airframe, but to be blocked totally, you have to fly in at least light / moderate ice for some time period. There is no magic or mystery, if you are in **visible mosture (eg cloud) and below freezing temps you can get ice. Stay out of visible mosture and in temps above freezing (or -40F) than airframe icing is a zero issue. So to re-cap stay out of clouds, freezing drizzle or rain in freezing temps, no ice.
Losing your airspeed would be a bummer but with GPS we do have a cool back up, ground speed. 20 years ago there where few GPS/Loran and DME was an exotic option in may GA planes, so on-board ground speed was not a common tool available to GA pilots.
Not saying heated pitot is useless, but it's should be useless to a VFR pilot and almost useless to a light IFR pilot. Hard core IFR and ice in a little single engine plane, heated pitot or not, is a "bad thing".
** Visiable mosture is defined by visabilites below 3 miles. Fog, clouds, rain, mist, drizzle and standing water on the airport ramp are all considered visable mosture. However if the temp is not below 0C than ice is not an issue.
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Heated Pitot Thoughts
I'm scratching my head on this one. If I were in the soup and disoriented, what if my ground speed was showing 50kts on the GPS and I had no indication nor idea that my real airspeed was 210 kts because I'm in a nose down attitude. I'm fixated on the airspeed indicator since it shows a big problem, something we pilots tend to do at such inopportune times.I'm going to full throttle and maybe even push the nose over as well to try to avoid a stall and thereby increase the airspeed making the situation real bad, real quick while lowering the ground speed the GPS is reporting in this new attitude. I think the heated pitot would be a good investment for me.
I'm scratching my head on this one. If I were in the soup and disoriented, what if my ground speed was showing 50kts on the GPS and I had no indication nor idea that my real airspeed was 210 kts because I'm in a nose down attitude. I'm fixated on the airspeed indicator since it shows a big problem, something we pilots tend to do at such inopportune times.I'm going to full throttle and maybe even push the nose over as well to try to avoid a stall and thereby increase the airspeed making the situation real bad, real quick while lowering the ground speed the GPS is reporting in this new attitude. I think the heated pitot would be a good investment for me.
Kevin Horton
Well Known Member
I'm not sure how GPS ground speed really helps, given that the wind can vary significantly from flight to flight, and from altitude to altitude. I've seen 60 kt of wind at 3000 ft, with less than 15 kt at the surface.gmcjetpilot said:
But, once you know your aircraft, it should be possible to fly a safe approach in VMC conditions with no airspeed indication.
