Peter - With as sophisticated as the rest of the airplanes are these days it seems outrageous to me to even have to think about having a large commercial aircraft to be put at risk by an iced up pitot tube. How about having 4 or 5 of the things with maybe two at a time out and available and the others retracted back for safe harbor in the airframe for some "R&R". As an alternative it would seem as simple as directing some nice warm compressor bleed air via a nozzle appropriately aimed at the pitots. Yes I imagine the warm air will introduce some error but it would seem that some error would be better than no data. With the capabilities that exist today and the typical layers of redundancy in other areas it just seems inexcusable to lose a airplane due to things as critical as having clogged pitots or static ports.
Barry Personally, I question the design philosophy here -- if the plane cannot be flown without accurate air speed signal, you'd damned well better insure that you NEVER lose that data stream..... Peter _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
