On top of a solid overcast laced with ice is no place to discover your deice equipment is on the blink.

By Bruce Chien

Wintertime is just around the corner. In the Midwest, this means gray, cold, wet, windy and only rarely clear and cold. It means IMC, wind and ice. It’s time to prepare both pilot and aircraft.

Once the weather is cold, the usual precautions apply. Starting cold engines below 32 degrees F is an invitation to not make TBO. All the oil has drained off your camshaft since that last flight two weeks ago. That thick gooey stuff just doesn’t push well through the impeller until it thins a bit. In the extreme case, the barrels get hot, and the cold oil doesn’t mobilize until there is irreparable damage to…