Several years ago a passenger aircraft crashed, killing everyone on board. It was thought that icing was the cause. Tests where made where an identical aircraft flew behind a tanker that sprayed it with water in freezing conditions. The tests confirmed that flying this aircraft in icing conditions would result in loss of control.
But what kind of aircraft was it? I’m thinking an Embraer operated by Comair in 1997. Is that the crash I’m thinking of (that prompted the icing test with an acutal aircraft)?
Fits your description and for some reason I remember this story. Hope this helps.
“Those tests included measuring the tilting forces created while taxiing at high-speeds with wooden shapes attached to the wings. In addition, some aircraft were flown behind a tanker plane, which sprayed them with water to see how they would perform in such conditions…”
The issue was that when holding with flaps partly extended and at a fairly high AOA the ice would form behind the deice boots. They drove around in light mixed ice for some 40 minutes before the buildup became critical.
From the video I saw, the plane was in a flat spin. I heard icing blamed on the news today. An alternatie explanation for a flat spin is IIRC center of gravity too far back, so when the plane stalls it does not nose dive.
I find it weird that anyone would deliberately ice a plane in flight. I assume it was not Calvin mode “until failure” (or the report would be more interesting) but to see where the ice starts to form and build, if the issue is that it can form in serious amounts behind the deicing boots.
In flight? This is a job for NASA’s Icing Research Tunnel at the Glenn Research Center. Their motto is “We freeze to please”. I worked there for awhile early in my career. After an icing run the wind tunnel would idle back to about 35 mph and we suited up in Arctic parkas and de-iced the wings with steam hoses and ran again. Once I was being blown downstream on the icy floor and had to hand over hand on the steam hose to get back!