Ha ha Graham..... that would be me that took a hit in clear VFR. As a
result I became an early adopter of the XM weather system. To this day I
don't know why my aircraft wasn't turned into a burn't potato crisp. Just
lucky I guess.
To be honest it's picking up ice on the Europa's laminar flow wing that
scares me. I recall one occasion when I was flying to my home base in my
Comanche enjoying the clear blue at 3500' and had to do a very modest ILS
down to 1200 ~ 1500'. I doubt if the cloud layer was 2000' thick and I
picked up so much ice that the wings looked like the inside of a freezer
and I couldn't see out of the wind screen. I had to land it by looking out
the side window. This stuff wasn't in the forecast and I know that it
wouldn't have had a happy ending in my Europa.
I do stand by my comment that it isn't a great instrument platform. IMHO
there are two aspects to this, unless the conditions are particularly
benign then you do find yourself being "bounced" around and off the glide
slope fairly easily. The other aspect is that once you are configured for
landing you are flying slowly so you spend much more time on the approach,
hence the opportunity to drift off is greater
With that said, I need to add some context. The heaviest aircraft I have
flown in IMC and on an approach is a CASA which weighs 20x what my Euorpa
weighs and has much higher approach speed. These types of aircraft are much
easier to fly approaches in.
I agree with Jon that certifying a Europa for instrument conditions isn't
much different than C150's and I doubt if we will see a bunch of Europa's
doing CFIT or falling out of the sky on an approach. With that said, it all
comes down to our risk profile, if we don't plan on poking around in "bad
stuff" and running down ILS minimums then life is good. As someone else
commented, its a better situation that scud running in marginal conditions.
I think its great to see the authorities in the UK being open to change.
Cheers, Paul
On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 4:20 AM, GRAHAM SINGLETON <
grahamsingleton@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> Brian
> One Europa had a lightning strike which took out most of the electronics
> and the lights.
> It happened many miles from the nearest cloud if I remember correctly.
> Graham
>
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