Flying Lesson #33 - Ice Isn't Nice

Flying Lesson #33 was quite short.

Good pre-flight of N7355PR, fuel tanks freshly filled and ready to go.

I was flying with Will today.

Good taxi, good run up, good seeing the helicopter on short final and requesting clearance from the tower for departure.

Good takeoff, get up to pattern altitude and turn crosswind we get this:

A nice solid mist, that quickly started to ice up the windshield and the rest of the plane. Visibility was bad in the mist and got worse immediately as the windshield iced over.

At that point it was time to call it, so I continued the pattern and let the tower know this landing would be to termination.

Will's view looked something like this on landing:

He asked me if I wanted him to take the landing and I said I could do it.

I had a very small portion of the windscreen to look out of as the rest was covered in ice but I had enough to see.

I then did the best landing I've ever done to date - perfectly lined up, perfect flare, touchdown as the stall horn went off and landed as smooth as a baby's butt.

Will was very impressed.

Not sure if that means I'm finally getting landings, or lack of visibility gives me a better landing and I really need to skip the Private Pilot rating and go straight to the instrument rating. Really excellent landings in crappy visibility are becoming a solid trend for me.

We told the tower about the icing and visibility conditions on landing, and the other flying lessons scheduled, including one in N757MK in the run-up area pretty quickly and wisely cancelled.

Getting out of the plane, it became readily apparent that the ice wasn't just on the windscreen but a very thin layer was all over the plane including the wings and prop.

That's the last flight of this year for me with .3 and one excellent landing, and my first experience with icing conditions.