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Does the AC-130 have de-ice or anti-ice protection for wings and surfaces? Can it fly in icing conditions? Looking at many pictures I see no sign of a shiny "hot wing" leading edge nor any boots. Does anyone have more information on this?

Federico
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Pugz
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1 Answers1

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The C-130 uses pressurized bleed air for leading-edge and window anti-ice. The props are deiced with electric heaters in the prop.

Source

The C-130 is very often used in places that experience icing. For example, the US Air Force flies the C-130 as a cargo/transport aircraft for Antarctic and Greenland operations:

enter image description here (Source: Popular Science)

Ron Beyer
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  • Alright, I didn't figure that it had enough spare compressed air to use bleed air for that, being a turboprop and not a jet (usually much higher volume at higher compression). Is that just extremely high temperature paint on the leading edges? It's not polished like civilian aircraft that use bleed air for deicing. – Pugz Mar 20 '17 at 20:20
  • I'm not sure of the temperature, it is probably somewhere around 250° where it starts out. All 4 engines are capable of supplying bleed air I believe. – Ron Beyer Mar 20 '17 at 20:21
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    Bleed air in the Herk is both really hot & also quite plentiful. All 4 motors turn at 100% RPM the whole time, and compressor stage where it is bled from (used to know that offhand, but haven't flown the Herk in quite a while) was hot as well, 600 degrees comes to mind. In jets, power to idle reduces your bleed pressure quite a bit; in the Herk, it doesn't matter. (My experience was on E and H model Herks, the J model has different motors & may not be the same.) – Ralph J Mar 20 '17 at 20:56
  • As someone who had a very brief stint working on the AC-130 in Iraq (helped with some tricky troubleshooting problems), with the rest of my experience being on "regular" C-130's, the gunships often had creative alternative systems to their "regular" counterparts. While it's been too long since I've worked on them, and I can't remember specifics, I wouldn't outright assume that what is normal on a C-130 is normal on an AC-130. It most likely is the same setup, but even if I could remember specifics, they try to keep details classified. – Frank Mar 21 '17 at 20:03
  • @Frank -- it'd be weird if the de-ice got ripped out/changed drastically though (as that's a rather basic system for just getting the plane from point A to point B in many parts of this world). – UnrecognizedFallingObject Mar 21 '17 at 23:04
  • "being a turboprop and not a jet". It's a jet. In fact some small %age of total thrust is coming out the exhaust. Bleed air temp is about 600F. The great debate has always been "turn it on and leave it on", or "turn on only as needed." Left on, the temp regulates and the flow does reduce. It is not unusual to turn off all bleed air during takeoff if runway length, obstacles, gross weight, air temp/pressure warrent. Fun fact: (Some) C-130's taking off for the Grenada invasion were beyond even the "emergency war weight". You know they had it off. – radarbob Mar 22 '17 at 00:46
  • @UnrecognizedFallingObject No doubt, I'm pretty sure you're correct. I just wanted to throw caution to the wind that the AC-130 is a different animal than the C-130E/H model, and that it's best not to assume that because the "normal" C-130 had something or did something a certain way, that the AC-130 should be presumed to be the same. Not trying to stir the pot, just throwing it out there. – Frank Mar 22 '17 at 02:48
  • @radarbob -- yeah, bleeds off would make sense for a max perf T/O procedure on any large turbine A/C. – UnrecognizedFallingObject Mar 22 '17 at 04:07