Sierra Del Barón Rojo

I attempted to leave at 06:50 but my plane's wings and stabilator were covered in ice. It looked like a mixture of frost and clear ice and it was fairly thick in places, so I had to wait for the sun to rise to melt the ice. I was not prepared to takeoff with any ice on the wings, having heard stories about the extra weight, induced flutter, and distruption to the airflow that ice can cause. Some say a wing's lift can be decreased by 30 percent and the drag increased by 40 percent by small amounts of ice no thicker than sandpaper on the top of the wing. I had leading edge ice, wing ice and also ice extendind down from the leading edge to underneath the wing just aft of the leading edge chord. Some say it would have melted just after takeoff - but they are not flying my plane, and I know how my plane climbs from a high density altitude airport at MTOW.

I studied the lie of the land in GoogleEarth before planning this flight, because low cloud had been predicted from the night before. I planned via Yass, then Cowra, and then over to Bathurst, because the land is lower towards Yass and because the weather forecast was better at that time of the morning along that route.

Well I left Canberra at 4500' and continued along my planned track until I was handed-off by Melbourne Centre. I then gradually climbed to 8500' above the cloud tops but under the radar steps and kept my eye on the cloud cover.

The cloud cover direct from Canberra to Bathurst was solid 8/8 and set at 6000' AMSL but as I approached Cowra I could see that it was breaking up. This cloud bank was basically trapped above the mountains and quite extensive.

The section of the route from Cowra to Bathurst was subject to Few cloud at about 6500' and was easy to pass. Due to the fact that I had been delayed by an hour, as soon as the way was clear of cloud, I headed towards Bathurst cutting out Cowra.


My passenger was not ready when I arrived so I was delayed at Bathurst by about an hour, and during this time the clouds to the south had started to lift and break-up a little.

Because I knew I was flying into a headwind and since Canberra was clear when we left, I returned directly from Bathurst to Canberra.

We had to deviate track a little and to request our own decent profile to remain clear of cloud after we were granted airways clearance back into the Canberra control zone, and despite the headwind and small deviations, we made fairly good time back.