So you need to think about a Janitrol heater, but it will be a major mod.
That would fit into your plane as well. The only issue is that you can’t take the gas cylinder with you. lol
There are some amazingly complicated engine preheater gadgets on the US market.
One of them uses a thingy which goes under every spark plug and heats each cylinder, plus a crankcase heater. It is permanently installed and you have a socket somewhere into which you plug the power.
I would rig up something with a fan heater, or a gas heater like muelli bought.
One could also preheat the cockpit with a little electric heater they use in greenhouses – again via a connector discreetly mounted somewhere.
But those are all just preheat solutions. I don’t think anything can be done for in-flight.
Today I flew in -8C (FL100) and when the sun was right behind me (i.e. no solar gain) the heater was doing OK (cockpit maybe +20C) on the max setting. There is a massive amount of hot air entering the cockpit – I would estimate 10kW – so a lot of it must be escaping somewhere!
In Canada many cars have plug in heaters for the engines. I don’t think they are complicated. Pilot-DAR?
With a water-cooled engine it is easier because the whole engine is one block and you just need to screw a heating element to the bottom of the crankcase and the heat will spread out. If you can pump the water round (with a little electric pump) then it’s even easier because you need to just heat the water at one point in its circuit. Also then the hot water heats the passenger compartment – if you switch on the electric fan which blows the air in (easy). There are products that do that, for c. €2000. They install next to the engine. I know a pilot who had a Volvo 4×4 with that, factory fitted, and could control it with SMS 
It uses the car fuel for the heat source – as in the Janitrol heaters. You could retrofit that to almost any car.
But most aero engines are aircooled and heating the crankcase isn’t going to get as much heat into the cylinder heads.
Perhaps drastic solutions are needed for ops in say -30C… in theory the engine needs to be raised by about 30C then.
If I was needing this I would make two holes, one in the lower cowling and one at the bottom of the cockpit (that one would be covered by a sprung cover, to prevent in-flight draughts), and I would rig up a big air heater which has two pipes coming out of it.
Based on yesterday’s flight at an OAT close to -40C I’m wondering what I can expect from the cabin heater. Obviously I’ve also asked on COPA the Cirrus specific part but I’m curious what others can report.
How good are cabin heaters? What temperatures one can expect? Where are the limitations?
Am I expected to dress like for going up skiing when flying high or should I dress normal because the heater will keep the cabin cozy?
When I fly in the cold, it is also cold on the ground, so I dress accordingly. But -40C ? That is awfully cold, and all kinds of other problems can occur. Is the composites in the Cirrus even OK at those temps?
Well… It’s certified up to FL250 so it better be. I don’t think that I saw maximum coldness for that altitude.
The main issue is that it may be 10C at one place, then you fly high and it’s really cold up there and upon landing you might have 17C. That was the case on the recent flight. So dressing accordingly is one thing but I really expected the heater to reduce the difference between OAT and the inside temperature.
