It was a snowy late-November morning at Chamberlain, South Dakota (9V9). A Pilatus PC-12 had sat out on the ramp during a night of intermittent snowfall and freezing drizzle. Its passengers, who had flown in from Idaho Falls the previous day to hunt pheasants, planned to return home that day.
While the rest of the party was out shooting, the private pilot, 48, and one companion got some isopropyl alcohol de-icing fluid from a hardware store, borrowed a ladder from the hunting lodge at which they had stayed, and spent three hours chipping snow and ice from the wings. The ladder was not tall enough to allow them to reach the upper surface of the T-tail, but the pilot was satisfied that the rest of the airplane was sufficiently clean.
