Brian Whatcott wrote:

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 06:26:46 GMT, Gord Beaman
wrote:


Well, I certainly have a lot of experience with ice...I flew the
Argus for 8 years. Almost all of that time was spent below 1000
feet over the North Atlantic, summer and winter. The Argus is a
four engined ASW a/c (big piston engines) and spends most of it's
life below 200 kts, down to about 160 knots for anywhere from 18
to 26 hours at a crack.

You can believe that we've come across some fearful icing
conditions. The airframe has a formidable anti and deicing
arsenal...each wing has it's own 600 BTU gasoline fired heater
and the tail also has one. A 200 BTU heater is supplied for cabin
heating. the props are electrically deiced and various intakes
have matt electrical heating pads. The engine carburetors have
hot air 'Carb heat' manually selected for anti-icing.
//

Wonderful insights from Gord - and he probably slipped a "K"
or X 1000 multiplier in his heater descriptions

Brian Whatcott Altus OK

Yes Brian, you're quite correct...wing heaters were indeed
600,000 BTU (same multiplier for the others too)

Here's another little unusual fact...the alternators were each
rated at 40,000 watts, they were 3 phase, 408 cps, and their
outputs were so closely controlled by Constant Speed Drives that
they could be (and were) operated all the time in parallel.
--

-Gord.
(use gordon in email)