The flight:
KLNS > KINT
Time 04/01/2011 1330 Z
Aircraft: "somewhat" de-iced Piper Aerostar. New boots all around, prop de-ice, alcohol windshield.
122 kt climb AS; 750-1000 fpm with the expected load. 10,000 foot limit.
Go-nogo? What route and altitude? See if you folks all jive with me.
So, I'm presuming a non-pressurized Aerostar then, and a Part 135 passenger-carrying flight...
I punched in KLNS KINT into ForeFlight and hit "ATC Routes" - It gave me LRP DELRO V39 at 8000 feet, with no specified airway exit - Presumably that's to keep you out of the way of Potomac Approach, so you could probably head direct after Martinsburg (MRB) VOR. However, you don't have many options WRT altitude - For direct MRB -> KINT you'd be able to go at either 8000 or 10,000 (lots of 6500-foot OROCAs along that route). If you add MRB V143 GSO to the route, you can *mostly* stay at 6000 - There's a 14-mile chunk of airway just south of Montebello (MOL) with a 6400-foot MEA.
Weather in the area of the destination looks pretty good - For your arrival, a bit breezy but VFR with SCT040 and P6SM. For the departure, your weather looks like crap. -RASN concerns me a bit - precip that can't make up its mind what it's gonna be is the kind of stuff that makes ice, in my mostly-uninformed opinion (that is, when I see that stuff I stay on the ground). If your pax are OK with it being a "game time decision" then it's worth waiting to see what actually happens.
Anyway, it appears that you're going to be in the muck the first half of the trip no matter what - Tops are forecast in the neighborhood of 15,000, and if TAF's are to be believed, you might pop out the bottoms around KCHO or afterwards. Temps aloft along the route vary from -2 to -10 at 6,000 or -6 to -13 at 9,000. Freezing levels 1,000-3,000 along the entire route.
Not sure what you mean by "somewhat de-iced." Sounds like you have all the components to me? Of course, the Aerostar has that wing that looks something like a knife, so I would imagine that it doesn't take much ice for it to really not work well? How much icing experience do you have in the plane, and how does it handle ice? Either way, since you'll be in the muck for probably half the trip, and you don't have a whole lot of places to go if you do end up picking up a lot of ice, I'd lean toward a no-go, though if you can save the decision for as late as possible, hopefully PIREPs will tell you the story. If you decide it's a "go" I would think that going as high as possible (10K in this case) is probably the best bet, at least until you get to the point where the lower MEA's meet improving weather, like CLYFF or ELLON.
FWIW, the icing products show low risk of SLD, and somewhere between 25-50% chance of moderate icing at some altitude. Skew-T for LNS would seem to indicate that the tops forecast is correct. Probably gonna get ugly in the climb, but temps at 10K about -13C.
Anyway... Kinda dicey IMO. If you were pressurized and could get on top, maybe it'd be a different story, but between this being a mission to get somewhere and only having 8K and 10K available for altitude, combined with the likelihood of being in the muck for 45 minutes or so with no good options...
So, I've laid it out there... Now it's time for Scott D to come along and tell me I'm wrong.
I look forward to the learning experience, thanks for posting this!