Airspeed indicators and cold temperatures, oh my!

[Dopster198 131]

or, "How shoddy airmenship can sometimes lead to the most memorable flights."

 

So I'm happily flying along in cold Ontario, Canada coming in for landing Windsor International Airport (which is a rather grandiose title, the default MSFS rendition is really not befitting its name) and doing a circuit around the field, lowering my flaps as I go. But I'm having trouble getting my airspeed below about 110 knots.

 

Lowering the power ever further, pulling the nose up more, trimming ... nothing seems to have much affect. Meanwhile the stall horn keeps going off. I'm getting annoyed : "What the heck, how is it stalling in this configuration, rah rah rah".

 

I manage to pull off a decent landing anyway, full flaps, airspeed still at least 100knots, stall horn blaring the whole way down. The plane starts rolling out and really slowing down now, but the airspeed is still pegged at 100kts. I'm now convinced I've found a bug, so grumbling get out my phone and shoot some video so I can make a bug report on this fine forum.

 

Then I realise ... waidaminute ... I'm in Canada ... it's flipping freezing here right now. I check my pitot heat ... yes, dear reader... apart from forgetting to set flaps 10 on takeoff earlier, your captain for today has also forgotten to turn on the pitot heat. I flick it on ... wait a minute or so and poof .. airspeed indicator pops back into action (and runs straight back down to 0).

 

My performance was nothing to write home about today, but boy will I never forget to turn that pitot heat on ever again!

[scoobyx 27]

I had something similar happen to me the other day flying in some pretty terrible conditions around KSYR. The strange thing was, I had been in icing conditions for a while and had all the anti-icing stuff running for quite some time. I was trying to bleed speed to make my approach to the airport and I couldn't get it below 140 Kts. The stall horn started firing off. I checked all my switches (including pitot heat) to confirm anti-icing and everything looked good. I ended up landing the plane (somewhat terrifying without any indication of correct airspeed) and still couldn't get the airspeed indicator below 140 Kts. I was sitting on the tarmac wondering what the heck was happening and decided to check my windshield de-ice. I had turned it off a short while back in the pattern just to see if I could get the windshield to ice over. I turned it back on and VOILA! About 30-45 seconds later my airspeed went down to zero and everything seemed okay. Pretty strange behavior, right?

[Paul K 93]

Neglecting pitot heat -  yep, been there, done that.