carb ice?

[cocolos]

I had a carb ice incident once as a student, intending to fly solo to LVK for landing practice. It was a busy day, and I sat in line for departure after run-up. It was cool and morning fog had just burned off (so it was humid as well). The engine built up a little carb ice while idling. On takeoff, I didn't notice much performance loss (I don't think there was a lot of ice here), but the carb ate a piece at 400 AGL. The engine missed. It recovered right away, and I was still climbing, so I called Tower and turned back, made a normal landing, reran the mag check (I thought it was an ignition miss), passed it, then parked the plane.

I squawked the problem because I really wasn't sure what happened, though I strongly suspected carb ice because of the lack of reproduceability. Mx concurred and put the aircraft back on the line. Aside from some wasted adrenaline, there was no damage to anything. But it sure is scary to have an engine burp at that kind of altitude.

That almost exactly happened to today at 700AGL I did a full run-up after I got back and everything checked out. I will have one of the other club members check it out as well but I highly suspect it was carb ice.

 

[Clark1961]

Has anyone ever experienced carb icing on anything other than an airplane engine (lawn mower, car, boat, etc.)? I haven't, and am wondering what the difference is.

A couple times, both Ford products: a 68 Mustang and an 80's F-150. The first was in near freezing weather with rain and fog. The second was in a spring snowstorm in the mountains. In both cases there was enough ice to see it in the carb throat.

The heat riser on the Mustang was in "disrepair" to say the least. As far as I know the F-150 was complete but it was a warm weather vehicle so who knows.