For all the touted utility of so-called TAAs-technically advanced airplanes—the great equalizer remains in-flight icing. When you find yourself slogging through a layer of mixed rime, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a 20-year-old Archer or a just-out-of-the-factory Cirrus. But the TAA manufacturers have risen to the challenge, with Cirrus and Mooney offering the fluid-based TKS de-ice system as an option and Lancair striking out on its own with something really technologically edgy: Electric de-icing.

Electric de-icing has always been a sensible idea that hovered just out of reach, chiefly because light airplanes can’t generate enough power per square-inch of wing area to make it work. Electric pads have found selective…