The Piper M Series - A Discussion on Airframe Ice with Dick Rochfort

Dick Rochfort is a Master Certified Flight Instructor providing excellent training, pre-purchase consulting, aircraft relocation and expert witness services to owners, pilots and instructors of the Piper PA46 aircraft. He holds ATP, Commercial and Gold Seal Flight Instructor Certificates with SEL, SES, MEL, CFII, MEI, and CE-525S ratings. He has been a full-time flight instructor working exclusively in PA46 aircraft (all variants) since 1992 and has over 10,000 hours in Make/Model.

[@jmotazedi]

Great tool. Makes life of a pilot simple

[@RWRPilotTraining]

Thanks John .. I concur! Fly Safely - Train Often .. DR

[@blakebrothers]

Great video, thanks Dick!

[@RWRPilotTraining]

You are most welcome .. Fly Safely - Train Often .. DR

[@weshudson4591]

Awesome! Learned something new

[@RWRPilotTraining]

Glad it was helpful! Fly Safely - Train Often .. DR

[@dane59589]

Good stuff, Dick. This is my go-to view for a final go/no-go decision. For an icing/turbulence outlook that goes beyond the 15 hours presented in ForeFlight, Windy has icing and turbulence forecasts based off Euro and GFS out 10 days or so. I imagine these visualizations are built of the forecast soundings, and, of course, the likelihood of a forecast validating goes down a ton after 24 hours or so. It may be only the paid version of windy, but I find that small subscription to be very much worth it.

[@RWRPilotTraining]

Yes indeed. Pilots need a way to see potential threats clearly and quickly. The Foreflight profile CIP/FIP-Turbulence view is conservative and it is the best I know of in this regard.. Fly Safely - Train Often .. DR

[@carlrossi7989]

Great video as always. And particularly relevant for me as we were also at BFI yesterday in our M350 and we delayed our departure for Eugene until around 330 pm not because of ice but because of the CB’s over and south of the airport. Despite the CIP and the turbulence forecast the flight was smooth at FL190 with no ice on departure and only light ice descending into EUG.
The forecasting tools are good but another important element yesterday were the PIREPS which were all for light ice at the most along our route. Profile view in FF is good but you also get an expanded view of the same in the “Vertical Cross Section” tab under briefings, no time slider but sometimes easier to view than the flight plan profile.
Lastly I’m curious to know what your experience has been with negotiating a non-standard departure with ATC around a busy Class B like SEA, yesterday they would have given you the NRVNA1 departure from BFI, heading SE, and with all the air carrier flow I suspect it would have been very difficult to try and negotiate a climb to the NW while on an IFR flight plan, unless I was absolutely sure I could get that request granted, in my experience trying to do against the flow stuff rarely if ever works…and I second the previous commenter’s opinion about Windy, yet another very useful program.

[@RWRPilotTraining]

Yes indeed! I always file for what I want and have firmly in mind the things I will accept. We did get the published departure as expected. The purpose of filing the route to the Northwest was to identify the route most likely to be ice free. Pireps are always helpful unless there are no pireps. The decision to depart is then based on all available information. It is important to remember that a report of light ice by a B737 defines an area to be avoided by boot equipped aircraft. We made the departure the next day as the weather began to improve. The CIP/FIP tends to be very conservative but my rule remains .. never more than light on the CIP/FIP. Fly Safely - Train Often .. DR