SR20 fresh air vents

Recently, I made a strange observation on our SR20 in cruise flight.

It was pretty hard IMC and we opened the front fresh air vents for cold air, but no air came out of the vents, only the vents themselves became very hot! After about 10 minutes, the vents started blowing very hot air into the cabin, although the selector was set for cold air.

Another 10 minutes and everything normalized as we got fresh cold air again.

That definitely wasn’t a pleasure while flying through strong showers!

Has anyone had any similar experiences?

Could it be this was caused by some kind of icing of the fresh air intakes?

BTW, has anyone had experiences with prop icing so far?

Philipp Tiemann

I have been told the the fresh air vents are the first thing to ice up.

Recently, I made a strange observation on our SR20 in cruise flight.

It was pretty hard IMC and we opened the front fresh air vents for cold air, but no air came out of the vents, only the vents themselves became very hot! After about 10 minutes, the vents started blowing very hot air into the cabin, although the selector was set for cold air.

Another 10 minutes and everything normalized as we got fresh cold air again.

That definitely wasn’t a pleasure while flying through strong showers!

Has anyone had any similar experiences?

Could it be this was caused by some kind of icing of the fresh air intakes?

BTW, has anyone had experiences with prop icing so far?

Philipp Tiemann