Carl Tyler's Blog

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Today I completed my first ever ice landing, woo hoo! It was a gorgeous day, blue skies, dense cold air (about 24F) and visibility for miles and miles (a very scientific term). The dog and I took of for Alton Bay from Rochester (Skyhaven) in trusty Piper Warrior 6450J(PA 28-18). Alton Bay is about a 20 minute flight from Rochester, it's nice because if you take off from runway 33 and don't turn, you're already pretty much on the exact heading you need to get there. (same rule doesn't apply coming back)

Having witnessed another pilots landing the day before I was a little nervous in case I embarrassed myself. I came in a little low, but the landing was pretty smooth. Landing on ice was a new experience, the breaks have basically zero effect and the nose wheel can point in any direction you want and the plane isn't necessarily going to follow.

Taxiing turned out to be tougher than the landing. I'd be rolling along and then I'd start to feel the plane turning sideways, the usual rules apply when in a skid, so I turned into the skid. One thing that is a little different though, in a plane you have your rudders, now rudders are like rudders in a boat, they're only really effective when you have some speed, so contrary to what you think, you need to apply a little power for the rudder to become more effective.

Anyway, here is the video from inside the cockpit, it was just me and the dog, and the dog hasn't yet worked out how to operate the camera, so I placed it on the instrument casing.



If you have lots of time to waste, and lots of bandwidth you can watch a much longer version here I turn the camera on about half way to Alton Bay here and I don't turn it off until the engine is turned off at Rochester and yes I also came in low for my landing at Rochester, I'll need to work on that.