As to oxygen, check scuba-diving outfits, although I don't know if there are any at Lac Leman..
Better yet, go to a local blacksmith. I am fortunate to know one in my village and I really have to make an effort to pay him. O2 in a welding bottle costs really very little he tells me, and I don't think that 'medical' O2 brings anything. Else I guess I would have noticed by now..
thanks Aart. Will do. I also definitely will install the O2D2 thingy. And once I have this, I will talk to Rod for some more breathing options for the engine too...
Lesson learnt: long range travel in Europe requires a solution solution for flying in the teens. Planes that cannot do FL150-180 will always be limited to shorter hops and elastic schedules.
CFIDave wrote:Yes, the DA42 climb rate and TKS de-ice makes a huge difference (not to mention having O2 onboard).
Last week on the way back from California I flew from a fuel stop in Denver to St. Louis in about 3.5 hours while dodging thunderstorms and TCUs at least half the time. To stay visual between the towering cumulous and cells we (easily) climbed to 17,000 feet, but soon hit a horizontal cloud layer and started picking up ice; it was -2C at that altitude across eastern Colorado. 19,000 feet would probably have had us above the icy cloud layer, but the DA42 unfortunately isn't certified above FL180.
So after turning on the de-ice (to MAX) I called ATC and was immediately granted a descent to 13,000 feet. A few minutes later the ice-prone horizontal layer above us disappeared somewhat, and we again needed to climb back up in order to dodge and remain visual on the vertical CBs and towering CU that went much higher than 20,000 feet, so we climbed back up to 15,000 feet. ATC didn't seem to mind that we were diverting left and right to find holes we could fly through with smooth air.
Later in the flight we had to divert about 100 miles north of a line of major thunderstorms across Missouri. We again had to fly high at 17,000 feet to stay visual and avoid the surrounding cells. Unfortunately the storm was heading to our St. Louis destination, and according to what I could see on the XM satellite weather display, looked like it might beat us there. So I put the "pedal to the metal" and increased the throttle from our usual 75% power up to 85%, and with a 30 knot tailwind component we saw about 220 knots across the ground. The rain was just starting as we taxied to a tie-down.
There's no way we could have made this flight in our DA40.
Wow, You and Antoine are a lot more daring in what you will fly through than I am (or at least I hope so). These tails are pretty scary, especially Antoine's because I am not sure he left himself with a good out. Whenever I plan on a x-country of any reasonable distance I try to make sure that I can put the plane down and have the time to wait out the bad weather. This has made me take commercial flights more often than I would like, and has led to a number of delays in flights on my DA42.
I also want to add, I have the AL-682 oxygen cylinder from mountain high. It holds about 650 liters and with the A2D2 system it lasts for several trips across the US. I get it refilled for $30 at our local oxygen supply center. Since it costs so little to use oxygen, I find that I put on the oxygen at any time I am going to be at 8K or higher.
A bit side note (although related to oxygen) - could someone please advice what is the symbol of DA42 oxygen refill connector (built-in system)? I do not know this valve, was looking at the maintenance manual, but there is silence about it...
yes it certainly was challenging, but here is my logic for assessing risks and deciding to proceed:
We had planned about 50% extra time for the trip (left Yeu at 14:10 and planned on a 3:30 flight plus 20-30 min stopover so that left about 2 hours of reserve).
The mighty thunderstorm over Châteauroux and the roof collapse ate-up most of the reserve and ATC another 10 minutes because of the lost FPL.
It was still doable but we had no obligation to get there that night so we did not have the "get-there-itis" syndrome.
We had full fuel on board, charts and options for 2 alternate destinations in case we could not punch through. I studied the IFR approaches of alternates before take-off from Châteauroux.
While the weather on the second leg turned out much worse than forecast, it was VFR under the cloud base - exit was readily available any time. We decided to fly on top in order to see the CB and TCU tops - same strategy Dave used on his very similar flight. Another reason for not flying under the cloud base was that we did not know if the Jura mountain range would be VFR. The forecast said "OK" but it had been too optimistic so far, so we wanted to stay on top.
We had a functional stormscope and said "niet" about 5 times to ATC asking us if we could re-join our planned route.
The only risk I am aware we took was to proceed to Nevers after deciding that the PIREP had incorrectly placed a CB there.
Needless to say we had slowed the plane down and had explicitly planned a U-turn and had the Stormscope page open. We would have exited at the first sign of something fishy.
Upon arrival, I was quite tired and waited until the next day to debrief this.
I think it was a good, challenging flight that required analysis, coordination with ATC, decision making and ... engine management. I was especially happy with the way we got ATC on our side and used their support as opposed to falling victim of their overload (many diversions) and the circumstances.
Would I do it again? Yes.
What would I change? O2 functional - it was a lot of work up there at 12'000 ft and I am pretty certain oxygen would have helped. And one day: Supercharger. The flight would have been a whole lot easier at FL160.
Henrik - fully agree with you. But I love my 40...
You may recall my thread about "what's next". The outcome was: keep DA40 for now and rent a de-iced plane in winter. Let's see if we are confronted with more icing risks in summer... that may put my decision under pressure.
Antoine,
You clearly did the right thing, and accomplished it safely if not without some excitement. I am not the one to criticize anyone else's weather decisions. I have been in bad enough icing that it left holes in the ice shield that needed to be repaired, I have diverted because of a thunderstorm that was over the field of intended landing (because a weather forcaster convinced me to fly there despite my concerns), diverted because both my airport of intended landing and my alternate went below minimums in clouds and snow, and after a couple of hours I tried again when the ceilings lifted only to find that I had to fly down to 100 ft AGL to see the runway (I saw the REIL at 200 AGL). And these occurred within the last 2 years of my 20+ years of flying and 2000+ hours. You would think that I know better And I won't even admit that while VFR we flew through a "small" thunderstorm on our Alaska trip last year (if anyone is interested in my daily blog of that trip, let me know and I can send you the URL). I thank you for pointing out your careful planning of your "outs" and just want to add for anyone else reading this thread how important it is to make sure we have planned more than one out when making our weather decisions.
carym wrote:Antoine,
I thank you for pointing out your careful planning of your "outs" and just want to add for anyone else reading this thread how important it is to make sure we have planned more than one out when making our weather decisions.
Yes, Cary. I am grateful for your reaction - it made me aware that my initial post had not highlighted the preparation of exit strategies. Pilots with (even) less experience who read this they could be mislead to believe that it is OK to take a DA40 into such weather with no particular precaution.
Actually flying IFR in a DA40 is quite a good way of developing survival strategies. No de-icing, no turbo and limited realtime weather information require at least one if not more exit scenario at all times.
And while I was genuinely happy for making this flight safely, I could not have done it at the beginning of my "IFR-career". The workload was really high and -importantly- keeping ATC on our side despite adverse communication circumstances was a key element of our safety. So if you are a newly certified IFR pilot reading this, please do not attempt the same. Fly safely. Please.
I've flown in Switzerland/Austria, and have crossed the ITCZ 7 times, and as for IFR decision, my favourite website is http://www.tripadvisor.com/ . There is always a nice hotel, and some culinary delights somewhere around an airport ;-))
Tommy wrote:What would the 42 have offered you that the 40 could not or did not?
Another thing the 42 offers is the GWX68 integrated weather radar. Would have been very useful to Antoine in this situation, of course. Confidence on where the embedded CBs actually are.
