The following is a guest post by writer Jon Wehrenberg, if you are interested in guest posting on our site please read the guidelines here.
This is about luck.
This is about learning the hard way. This is about a life’s lesson that will never be forgotten.
First I’ll set the scene. I was a relatively new instrument rated pilot with less than 300 hours. This was at a time when a pilot needed 235 or 250 hours to be able to take an instrument rating check ride. From the time I started learning to fly I was a constant student. I took my time getting my private license and had about 77 hours when I took the test. I flew quite a bit VFR, but soon realized I needed my instrument rating to make better use of the plane so it wasn’t long before I was again sitting with instructors. By the time I got my instrument rating I wanted to stop being a student and to just be a pilot. As you will see that was a stupid mistake.
I was with my wife and we were returning from a business meeting in Fort Lauderdale, FL. We had flown from there to Brunswick, GA where we stayed the night. When I called for the weather briefing prior to the departure for the first leg of our trip back to Jamestown, NY the enroute weather was expected to be good and the weather at Jamestown was expected to be 1400 foot ceilings with light snow, and visibilities in snow down to 1 ¼ miles at our expected arrival time. We lived in Jamestown, I had flown a lot of approaches into Jamestown, and I was not concerned about the potential for limited visibility. We were flying our Cessna 172 and I saw no problem finding the runway with 1 ¼ miles visibility after flying an ILS.
But I did have a concern. I wasn’t highly experienced as an instrument rated pilot so I asked about ice. It was never mentioned in the briefing so I asked specifically if there was any forecast or expected. The answer was no.
Our lunch stop was New River Valley Airport. After lunch I got another briefing when I filed the flight plan for the second and final leg. Nothing had changed. Same expected ceiling and visibility. I again asked FSS about icing. No pireps, none forecast, none expected. Because we were tracking V37 and the minimum altitudes along portions of the airway were 8000 feet I flew at 11,000 and soon found ourselves nearing our destination over a solid layer. We were in the clear, not a cloud above us and a pure white solid layer somewhere below us.
As we approached Jamestown the sun was starting to set. It was still very light out but below the layer it would be dark.
Soon we were switched from Cleveland Center to Erie Approach Control (ERI was the IFR controlling facility for Jamestown which not only did not have a tower, it did not have radar coverage). Pilots navigate all the approaches on their own. No vectors there, and this was in the day when dual nav-coms and an ADF were all most planes, including mine had. ERI Cleared me to 7,000 feet which was just above the solid layer. I was just anticipating a clearance from ERI to a lower altitude when there was a little wisp of a cloud sticking up out of the overcast below us. I went through that cloud wisp that couldn’t have been 75 feet deep, and my windshield instantly iced over.
Not a little ice, but a thin solid opaque layer of gray ice. I had just had my first icing encounter and all of a sudden I knew I had some serious problems ahead.
The preceding was part 1 of a 3 part series written by Jon W. Wehrenberg describing an icing experience, and what he learned from it. Jon started flying in 1977 and added an instrument rating in 1978 and an ATP in 1990. In early 2008 he co-founded Pilots n’ Paws and today he makes extensive use of the plane transporting rescue animals to safety.
Check back soon for parts 2 and 3!
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