The A2A Simulations Community

A few days ago, I was flying the A2A Cessna 172 for FSX on a cross country at 3000' in real world weather, with light precipitation and the OAT around -15 celsius. Suddenly, the plane began to shake vigorously and literally began to fall out of the sky. I used slew mode to bring it down safely at an airport.
Today, I know I shouldn't have, but I attempted to take off in -20 celsius with moderate precipitation and visibly high shine on the runway. Although the plane was very lightly loaded, even at 65 knots, it would not lift off the ground and again would shake very roughly. I aborted the takeoff halfway down the runway and put the plane away.
For both these occurances I think it was wing icing. My question is that does the A2A Cessna 172 actually simulate wing icing, and are these the symptoms? I know in real life this would definitely be the case, but would be surprised to see this in action in this model.

PS. The plane has only 3.9 hours on it and I preflight it every time I fly. Maintenance Hangar says plane is in excellent shape.

Hi.
Yes the A2A aircraft model the effects of icing on the aircraft with regards to handling , but as yet they do not model icing visually.
The shaking of the airframe would suggest a stall , what was your airspeed at 3000ft.
I have flown the c172 around the FSX world , in both high and low temps with real weather from ASN without too much issue .
Also you would be better putting your c172 issues in the C172 FORUM section else it could get overlooked , there is a general section and tech issue section for each aircraft type.
regards alan.

alan CXA651 wrote:Hi.
Yes the A2A aircraft model the effects of icing on the aircraft with regards to handling , but as yet they do not model icing visually.
The shaking of the airframe would suggest a stall , what was your airspeed at 3000ft.
I have flown the c172 around the FSX world , in both high and low temps with real weather from ASN without too much issue .
Also you would be better putting your c172 issues in the C172 FORUM section else it could get overlooked , there is a general section and tech issue section for each aircraft type.
regards alan.

My speed was about 100-110kts at the cruise. All of a sudden the plane just began to shake and drop. Even with high speeds such as 130kts at one point, I would not be able to recover. At this point I am quite confused. I think that Icing is not simulated to affect the speed but the amount of lift produced by the wings, hence why my speed was high but lift was minimal. The feeling I got from the controls was quite similar to those of a stall though. Completely sure I was not in a stall or in any attitude to result in a stall though.

Stalls can occur at any speed. A stall is a function of the angle of attack. If the angle of attack is exceeded for a given wing, then it will stall. You can be in ahh attitude, even pointing straight down at the ground and enter a stall.

Icing will charge the shape of the wing and add weight and drag to the aircraft, both of which will quickly and dramatically affect performance in a very bad way.

When icing begins to occur, they only option in these small aircraft is to get the back out if there promptly by reversing course and/or descending to warmer air. The emergency procedures recommend keeping airspeed up and landing at a higher airspeed. It is also advised not to extend flaps because of the higher airspeed required to maintain lift as well as the unexpected results from further changing the airflow around the wing and tail.

There is usually ample warningos in the sim about airframe icing such as decreasing indicated airspeed due to higher weight and drag while trying to maintain altitude. IRL, icing can happen alarmingly fast under the right conditions. You can find the plane struggling to fly in less than a minute.

Now, where were you and when? Precipitation causing icing conditions is rather unlikely at or about sea level when OAT is that -15...-20 °C. There would be a specific reason for icing in those conditions, otherwise they would indicate a good winter flying day.

When it snows in that cold, it is most often of that stuff you sweep off with a brush. In flight, or during takeoff, airflow does that for you.

-Esa