On Nov 24, 12:26*pm, T8 wrote:

You mentioned Dan & Dave Cole in another thread in the context of
getting good, conservative advice. *Ask them. *I predict you'll get
some more good, conservative advice :-).

Temptation to fly with ballast in extremely cold weather is sometimes
an indicator of an excessive BCS ratio.

-Evan Ludeman / T8

Ditto on that. We at Blairstown fly ridge all year round, and over
the years folks have fiddled with this stuff. There are just too many
things to go wrong. I have a great photo somewhere of Dave Michaud
(UM) with like 8 lbs of ice (okay, probably not 8) hanging off his
tail boom. Some combination of leaking dump valve in the wing and
getting the mixing ratio of anti-freeze wrong.

Frankly, the days are too short for record flights, so the only
reason to carry ballast is to smooth out the ride a bit or go a little
faster. I submit that it's just not worth it.

P3