Engine icing

[kyrre1978]

Hello,

A question for you IXEG developers.

I just tried a flight setting up some really nasty weather, including heavy precipitation and a temperature at sea level around -5 to -10 degrees. I kept flying the aircraft through areas of precipitation marked with red and yellow on my radar. It seems that the weather radar is fairly accurate in terms of where the precipitation actually is, that is, rain started to hammer at my windshield when I flew through the red and yellow areas. It also started to rain (but more sporadically) when flying through green areas on the radar. I do have some limited experience with using weather radar in real life. I once flew a twin that had this monochrome screen, which could only show different shades of green. My question is, can the engines fail when flying through icing and not using engine anti-ice? For this flight, I also left the engine start switches to the OFF position, trying to "provoke" a failure. Trying to fly without wing anti-ice actually resulted in less and less airspeed, until, well, the aircraft eventually stalled and went out of control. So that actually seems to have an effect (which is really nice in terms of realism!). 

Do you guys know if the weather radar models limitations of the real weather radar (such as precipitation begin shadowed behind an area closer to the aircraft) ?

I have to say also, very impressed by the depth of the systems, the behaviour and last, but not least, the sound effects. I don't have any real world experience piloting the 737, but I have several jump seat trips in the classic series. I have never before seen a desktop simulation of this airplane that looks and feel this much like the real one, so, kudos to the team for that!

I've attached a picture of X-plane's own icing dispay, showing a significant buildup on the inlet (I would assume those represent the engine inlets).

Best regards,

Kyrre Andersen

[Litjan]

Also watch tutorial video 3 for more info on this

Jan

 

[Nils]

On 4/24/2016 at 5:22 PM, kyrre1978 said:

Do you guys know if the weather radar models limitations of the real weather radar (such as precipitation begin shadowed behind an area closer to the aircraft) ?

 

Radar returns are shadowed by terrain and so obviously you can't see precipitation behind a mountain. We also make assumptions about the amount of water vs ice content in clouds at different altitudes. As the radar shows water but not ICE, you have to point the beam at the base of a towering CB to be sure of seeing a strong return.