Thread: airspeed problems after rainy flight

Anyone ever experience airspeed problems after flying in the rain? I had to remove dynon and blow back thru pitot line to remove a few drops of water to get things working right again after a ride thru the rain the other day. Dan Davis at Metro Aviation will install a small collector sack in the line at my next visit. He did this to our other CTs and we never had another problem. He said the water cant evaporate out of the line, but it can evaporate from the little collection sack. Last winter after flying thru a snow squall and landing for a few hours we had no airspeed at all on the return flight. Put it in a heated hanger and blew it out the next day. If it ever happens dont sweat it just use your normal rpm's and flaps and you wont know the difference. You can certainly feel these things getting mushy way ahead of a stall.

Had it in a Cirrus one time after it sat on the ramp in a heavy rain storm. Airspeed seemed fine thru rotation but on climb out it didn't seem to match pitch atitude, it was lower than normal. Maintained the normal pitch and power for climb, turned on the pitot heat, and once I leveled off things returned to normal. Always good to keep those ptch attitudes and sight pictures for all phases of flight fresh in your mind in case of malfunctions like this. The CT has a Vy climb pitch attitude of about 7 deg nose up with -6 flaps. For descent at -6 flaps and 5000rpm, 2.5 deg nose down will yield a 500fpm descent.

Eric