Ah, the Hypocrisy

[HYHYBT]

Thanks; that makes much more sense than "well, we won't get into ice that often anyway." Even if I don't know what mots are

Though there are other possible deicing systems than engine air. If the ice doesn't cause any harm (reduced lift, poor handling, enough increased weight to matter), there's no need to remove it.

[Rapscallion]

MOT - ministry of transport yearly test to ensure vehicle worthiness.

*kick* "Not too much rust fell off." *kick*

Rapscallion

[HYHYBT]

I think that's one of the meanings I found, but I still don't know what mots are in... and in the middle of typing this sentence it hit me that it's a typo for "most." Sorry. I genuinely didn't realize it, or I'd (probably) have said nothing.

Although ice on "most of the wing" would likely mess up the airflow and therefore reduce your lift.

[s_stabeler]

Actually, it was a typo. It was indeed supposed to be most. As for ice on most of the wing, i think ti was discovered the ice tended to build up in one specific place on the wing, so that's' where the anti-ice system went. As for messing up airflow, that's probably why it can only tolerate moderate icing, not severe.

[macphile]

What is this "thousands of years" of thinking about marriage she's on about? Does she not realize that--oh for feck's sake, I forgot who I was talking about. LOL.

[wolfie]

I'm surprised that nobody has pointed out that the statements I made about the A380 and F-35, while accurate, are irrelevant. What's the point of a debate if people accept statements as given, without checking them out?

The DEFINITION of severe icing (as opposed to moderate icing) is that the ice builds up faster than the anti-ice system can get rid of it. Theoretically, you could have something that would ice up even under the flame of an oxyacetylene torch. Also, the F-35 is a single-engine aircraft, while the CF-18 is a twin. Lindbergh's "degraded power" test was that the plane had to be able to get over the Rockies with one engine shut down. He expected that a Trimotor would be needed, but the DC-1 (only one was built - the production model was stretched to hold 1 more row of seats, and renamed the DC-2) could do it with only 2 engines.

Areas where I am opposed to (a different) Airbus design and the F-35 are:

- The "fly-by-wire" system on the A320, rather than merely passing the control inputs along to the control surfaces, "second-guesses" the pilot and "caps" any that it considers to be excessive - this was blamed for the crash at an airshow when it was a new design (low and slow, pilot gave full throttle, but the engines didn't start to "spool up" until a couple seconds later). This violates the legal concept of "Pilot In Command", namely that the pilot has the ultimate responsibility for what happens, and must therefore have the ultimate authority. A computer system can know "At this speed, the combination of full aileron deflection and full up elevator will exceed the stresses the airframe was designed to handle, so I'll limit control surface deflections to safe values". It can't see what the pilot does - another plane just emerged from a cloud on a collision course, and a full inspection of an overstressed airframe - even if the results show that the damage can't be economically repaired, so the plane is scrapped - is the lesser of two evils compared to a midair collision. The computer has usurped the pilot's authority. On the other hand, it WOULD be legitimate for the system to log the "you goofed" inputs (while passing them through), and set a flag to show that there was something "interesting" in the logs so the pilot could be questioned on it by the airline's safety director. In this case, the pilot would still have ultimate authority, but he'd better have a damn good explanation for why he gave "out of range" control inputs.

- The F-35 does not have enough range to carry out missions that the CF-18 has ROUTINELY flown, intercepting and turning back Russian long-range recon aircraft. Since this is a routine mission for Canadian aircraft, and is beyond the capabilities of the F-35, it's clearly the wrong plane for the job.

- Disclaimer: I don't know what Canada's air-to-air refueling capability is, or even if we have any. As for the fighters, I'm basing it on which branch of the U.S. military uses (or is planning to use) the same plane. The CF-18 is the same plane as the F-18 flown by the U.S. Navy (in fact, we got a good deal by tacking our order onto one of theirs). As such, it has Navy-type refueling equipment (uses probe-and-drogue refueling, "plugging into" a fuel line trailing behind the tanker). While placing a higher workload on the fighter pilot, it means that many types of aircraft can be used as tankers (USN used the A6 with a "buddy pack" for a long time) rather than needing dedicated tanker aircraft - an important consideration with carrier deck space being a limited commodity. The F-35 is a USAF design, and they use boom-type refueling (a rigid probe sticking down from the tanker is manouvered by the boom operator, and "plugs into" a socket on the receiving aircraft, which only needs to hold position within a limited "window"). Less workload is placed on the (possibly fatigued after a long mission) pilot of the receiving aircraft, but it requires purpose-built tankers. While the relative merits of the 2 systems are debatable, the fact is that they are not compatible (although a plane can be built with both sets of receiving equipment, or a tanker with both types of supply equipment). Since this adds weight, it's not common. To the best of my knowledge, there is no current "USN tanker/USAF receiver" or "USAF tanker/USN receiver" capable pair of aircraft in service. By switching from a USN design to a USAF design, Canada would need to spend additional money to maintain air-to-air refueling capability, assuming we have any (high probability, since it would be fairly easy to add the USN-type tanker equipment to our C-130 Hercules aircraft) It would require an extensive refit to add the "boom" to the Hercs.