So just as it says on the bottle you use TKS to de-ice. Just spray it on and the resulting water will flow off by itself?
I will probably will have to what until next year – spring is getting closer :-) – before I can try it out personally but I think that is a great way for doing this job.
Yes, you just spray it on and make sure you don’t then wait very long to depart. What you can do is take a roll of paper towels with you and wipe it off from the wings. All I am suggesting is that it doesn’t take too much effort. Also, I am not sure but I don’t think you can use this approach when you have an aircraft with boots. I have no clue but can imagine that TKS fluid and boots don’t mix.
Few days ago I also used TKS fluid – it took me 15 min to deice the aircraft although I didn’t use garden spray. I just poured some TKS from the can and used soft cloth to spread it accross the wings, tail and fuselage.
Following the winter theme of recent posts. Those of you who fly into resort airports, how to you deal with deicing? Hangarage seems impossible so do you just get deiced or carry something with you?
In general the risk of icing is rather limited. Most of the time maybe except Salzburg or Innsbruck you will fly only for a short trip with good weather. Bad weather is no fun on the slopes and you risk not being able to take off again for a week or so if the weather turn bad with mountains around.
For emergencies I carry a soft broom and a bucked with a dozen of those 500ml deice bottles from a car parts store and warm gloves. In several years I had to use that gear only once. I also tried to apply some of that stuff in advance but the “hold over time” is just too short so that did not make sense. I would use airport deicing only as a last resort and only after using the soft broom and using up all the car deice bottles. I never had to use professional deicing but I did have a look at the price lists and they will charge by the liter of fluid which can easily add up to 1000 Euros and maybe more.
Also check on parking restrictions. In fact nearly all airports suitable for nice skiing have some sort of winter parking restrictions.
Isn’t the car stuff corrosive on aluminium?
Re hangarage, I posted some info in the Swiss skiing airport thread. Sion will put you into a heated hangar for about 100 quid, just to thaw it off.
Jason I saw yesterday a jet that looked a bit like yours (sizewise at least). They had custom made covers protecting the wings. I didn’t check the stab but I reckon one can make them for the stab as well. All you’d need is a collapsible ladder.
Of course depending on the weather you might have to deice anyway before departing…
JasonC wrote:
Those of you who fly into resort airports, how to you deal with deicing?
This is not only an issue with ski resort airports, but winter flying in central Europe in general (not this winter obviously … but maybe it will get colder in January).
We carry a basic “do it yourself” deicing kit on board every aircraft:
A broom with a long telescopic stick so that we can reach the important parts of the aircraft. Don’t know about the Mustang, but with most other Citations only the wings and empennage are ice-critical, the fuselage is not. Instead of the broom we can also fix one of these things (no idea what this is called in English):
to the stick to remove rain water or slush that is about to freeze from the wings. When slush freezes to your plane overnight, they need an awful lot of deice fluid to remove it from the plane in the morning. Expect around 2000 Euros for an aircraft the size of a Mustang… Spending half an hour removing the slush while it is not frozen yet results in an excellent hourly rate 
Additionally we have a five litre canister with pure aircraft deice fluid (can be obtained from most refuellers around here) and a garden spray like this:
to remove light coats of rimfrost from the windscreen and wings. Never scrape the Citation windshields with anything! Use only fluid and a clean cloth that gets used for nothing else. These five litres of fluid will take care of light rimfrost and maybe some residue that remains after brooming the snow away. If in the least bit of doubt, get the aircraft deiced professionally. Money comes and goes, but you only have one life.
One more thing: Always ask for a hangar! Even if there is usually no hangar space available there might be an empty spot on short notice. A resident plane that is away for the night, a customer who booked but didn’t come or just some creative aircraft stacking technique of a clever handling guy. Even at places like Samedan you will get a hangar spot overnight on occasions. And if they can’t put your aircraft in the hangar overnight, they might be able to tow it in for two hours in the morning which is often sufficient to melt ice and snow. Ten nights in the hangar cost about as much as one full deicing.
