Slipping the surly bonds of ice

By MATT JOHNSON

I live in Fargo, North Dakota, where winter can last anywhere from six to 13 months of the year. (We use a “Frozorian calendar” up here, which has an extra month.)

When I first moved back to Fargo after living elsewhere for quite a while — Fargoans call it “living abroad” — I asked the Fargo airport manager how much it would cost to tie down my airplane on the ramp.

He looked at me across his desk as if I had asked him “How long will it take me to drive a car from my side of this desk over to your side of the desk?” but he answered politely, like Fargo people do, saying “Well, that would be free. But nobody does that.”

So it’s cold here is what I’m saying.

That hit home during a recent flight from Flying Cloud Airport (KFCM) in Minnesota.

I was flying along at 14,000 feet on an IFR flight plan, fat, dumb, and happy. Filing and flying IFR is SO much easier than flying VFR, I was thinking.

But then it wasn’t.

Minneapolis Center said, “Lancair 214DK, descend and maintain 8,000 feet.”

I thought, “I have to do that, because he told me to,” so I did.

Turns out I should not have done that.

I entered the clouds at about 9,000 feet and immediately ice began to build up on the wings. I didn’t see the wing ice at first because I was busy looking for ice on the windscreen. But there was none.

Finally when I looked left, then right, I saw ice on my wings from wing tip to wing root. Yikes! All white at the edges and getting whiter.

Suddenly I was William Shatner in the Twilight Zone turning to the person in the right seat and saying “Look at that stuff on the wings.”

He’s not a pilot so he didn’t have the same near panic as I did. See the Lancair has this thin, laminar-flow wing that if you get ice on it, well, bye-bye “lift.”

Ice is bad for my little wings, I was told when training, and I thought “Ho ho, I’ll never get into icing conditions. Not me!”

I keyed the mic and said in what I hoped was a cool pilot voice, “Minneapolis Center, this is Lancair 214DK. I am picking up icing, rapid buildup, request an avoidance vector.”

ATC said, “Do you want a vector?”

I replied, “Yes I’d like to turn left immediately to avoid the icing, 4DK.”

ATC: “Lancair 214DK, you are free to maneuver as needed to avoid the ice. What altitude would you like?”

All this as I was in a 45° bank doing a 180, looking out the cockpit at my white wings. I said, “Stand by one.”

Then I looked up and saw a blue hole in the clouds — blue sky! I think I even saw the face of God.

I said “4DK, request 12,000 feet. I’d like to slip the surly bonds of ice.”

No, I didn’t say all that.

Minneapolis Center snapped me out of my near panic, which I bet is a lot like real panic. They said in a clear, slow-paced voice: “214DK, you want to climb to avoid the icing?”

Well that snapped me out of it completely. I said “Center, thank you for asking that, request lower, Lancair 214DK. I’ll go touch God’s face later.” (I may be embellishing here.)

ATC: “4DK, you are free to maneuver as necessary to avoid all those icebergs bobbing about in the North Sea, descend and maintain 5,000, cleared direct Fargo when able. Godspeed.”

I dove down to 5,000 feet like a P-51 chasing a Messerschmitt and then I saw clear sky beneath me and around me, then the ground.

Fergus Falls Municipal Airport (KFFM) never look so good. In fact, I had never seen it before, but still. The Minnesota State Mental Hospital used to be in Fergus Falls, I idly thought, thinking about how insane it was that I descended into ice-filled clouds from blue sky, no traffic within a hundred miles of me, just because some guy told me to.

While I was trying to get clear of that ice, I could hear my US Air Force instructor pilot’s voice saying “GET ON THE INSTRUMENTS, BELIEVE THE INSTRUMENTS.”

Well, I didn’t do that at first, but when I heard the Garmin lady’s voice yell “PUT GEAR DOWN NOW!” I then, by golly, got on the instruments, saw I was 17° nose high, airspeed falling through 130 knots. Whoa Nelly.

So I recovered. In my Air Force training days we instructor pilots said, for some reason — I think passed down for generations from pilot to pilot — “RECOVER!” to the student, after we’d put them in an unusual attitude, and give them the controls.

Later, safely on the ground I read an article about how there are six ways pilots get confused in the clouds, seven of which are fatal. They all come from flying “by feel,” and allowing the “tumbled gyros,” or inner ear disturbances, to influence a pilot’s thinking.

Remember, it’s all in the eyes. That’s why the ADI is so huge and is in the center of the cockpit. Looking at that cures all.

So when a flight becomes overwhelming, remember to GET ON THE INSTRUMENTS, BELIEVE THE INSTRUMENTS.

This postpones “touching the face of God” until later.

Amen.