Stepping out of the Holiday Inn at 6:30AM, for a 8AM takeoff, first thing I notice is those white "flakes" flying around in the air! Wasn't much, but still something of a clue that something was amiss with that weather forecast! It also tells me the cold front has either passed or setting right on top of KNX, and I better go down to FSS and get a first hand brief.
All these "weather dudes" remind me of "Mr. Peepers" of TV fame, can't remember which show he was on, but this guy had the pipe stuck in the corner of this mouth, a "bow" tie on, with one of those "tweet" dinner jackets on. Not to good if you going Northeast, he said, a low pressure had filled in off the coast of North Caroline and with that "counter=clock" wise flow of air, its pumping mass amounts of moisture into this cold front, which is laying just South of here, running all the way up to just Northwest of Login International at Boston. Well now, lets see, we need to go North to get out of this weather, then East, so to LEX, Portsmouth, Parkersburg, Harrisburg, New York, then on to Boston. A lot of extra flying, but keep us North of the front and out of the nasty stuff, ICE!
To LEX was just plain routine, so I was letting Knoxy do the flying and everything was real smooth, we turn East bound now, well, Northeast bound to Portsmouth, then East bound to Parkersburg, where we would get back into the mountain area of this leg.
I had rather interestingly watch the "carb" temp gauges slowly descending and were both +3 degrees cent. Knoxy, increase carb heat a little, don't let those temps get to +2, we got keep them around +5 or 6. These old tired engines run OK, but not with a carburetor full of ice! We had been back in the clouds for about 30 minutes at 11,000 feet and the OAT was hanging right around 0 degrees centigrade and I was just beginning to see the tale tale signs of serious icing! First place you start noticing it is in the corners of the windshield, then the "slide" back window on my side and the other side. I begin to hear the pitter patter of small ice hitting the sides of the fuselage from the props, so OK, turn on prop deicing and just 2 or 3 minutes later, no more ice hitting the fuselage. We were now going into an area of broken clouds and in the clear, I could see up ahead, some mighty dark looking areas and I knew then, that cold front was starting to "back" up as a warm front, because of the push by the low pressure area off North Caroline. Carb temps had climbed back up, that problem now gone, at least for now.
Center calls and says, where you going? You are about 10 miles North of your course now! Oh, crap, Batman, I twist the OBS on the only nav we have and nothing! Needle wouldn't move, so now we have no navigational radio, nothing but an old tired ADF, which looked like it was in the "Sprit of St. Louis" when Lindy made his famous crossing! I had turned it on, so I knew that it worked, so pulled out the Jepps and started looking for a NDB close by where I could check the thing. Found one and sure enough, needle #1 flipped right to it and was pointing 270 degrees and I knew the station should be off our left wing, so OK, guess it works!
By now its getting darker by the minute and we are running in and out of rain showers and suddenly, the OAT starts going "south" on us and I knew we were flying into an transition area, know as an occlusion, because the Mr. Peepers types don't know what to call it, a warm or a cold front!
All this time, I am watching the fuel gauges on the right side going down, and I knew to get to Harrisburg and land, I was going to have to shut down the right engine, to conserve fuel and have enough to shoot a ADF approach into HRS. If this C-4 auto pilot had not quit working in the first 30 minutes of flight on the start of this trip, it would be to bad, but now I am flying and having a little trouble keeping heading and altitude, as we had entered an area of light to moderate turbulence, and I said to myself, "Tater", you get deeper and deeper into that bucket of sh**, so better get to praying I guess. Then, it happened, the right engine started running rough, but still running and I checked over everything and as soon as I checked the mags, when I move it to "R", engine quit stone cold. Before I moved it back, I reduce throttle on right side, so as to not blow a cylinder off with a backfire! Then off to our right side, (seem like the right side of that airplane is "jinxed"), a bolt of lighting! I told Knoxy, lower your seat down all the way, tighten up the belts, turn on the over heat dome lights, turn up the instrument lighting wide open. Why?, Knoxy asked, because I replied, if a lighting bolt hits close by or we have a lighting strike ourselves, then, maybe, maybe you won't be blinded by the lightning flash. By now, with my alert system working overtime, I knew I had to shut down that right engine, because it was getting rougher and rougher, but up ahead were some mountains where the MEA was 7,000 feet. I don't know if this thing will hold 7,000 feet on one engine! I shut it down, retrimed and settle down to single engine work and watched the altimeter start drifting down, so increase the power on left engine to best cruise settings and it was still drifting slowly down! I had begin to notice our OAT had dropped to -4 degrees cent and carb temp on left engine was also down to +3 degrees, so increased carb heat a little and then I sensed something and turned on the ice lights on left wing and uh, oh, clear ice forming from these rain showers we are running into and out of! I told Knoxy, fire up #2, as the vacuum pump on that engine inflates the boots on the right wing and we had to get rid of that ice! He fired it up and it sounded like a chicken choking to death on a shoe string, but we cycled the boots on both sides and got rid of the clear ice for right now. We shut down the engine again and we were now down to about 8500 or so and I did not want to go to full power on left engine to hold altitude unless I HAD to! Center advises, 16 miles ahead, pass "brookstone" intersection, then MEA was 5,000 feet and 56 miles to Harrisburg. They advise HSB is 1200 broken, 2000 overcast and light freezing rain and visibility 1 mile.
We got it made now Knoxy, just get the ADF tuned up to the outer marker here and we will work a ADF approach into this place and spend the night!
I told Knoxy, when that #1 needle reverses from 360 to 180, start up that right engine incase we have to do a missed approach procedure. #2 needle tuned to the middle marker, so staying on track was easy after figuring out I had to carry 355 degrees on the DG, to make a 360 track on the ground, so I had to also figure out decent speed so as to break out somewhere over the airport and I knew with this approach, we would have to do a circle to land after breaking out of the soup. Charts doesn't show any antenna's above a 100 feet close to the airport, so no problem there. Approach decent speed should be 300 feet per minute and surre enough, we broke out about 1100 above the ground and I made a circling approach to the runway and landed.
After we got out of the aircraft and was looking at all the Ice, a ramp attendant came up and said, "where in the heck did you guys come from?" I replied, son, we just came here from hell!
