I began as an instructor at the Beechcraft Training Center on Jan. 3, 1972. If anyone had told me then that I would still be teaching King Air pilots in 2022, I would have thought they were crazy, but so it is. To steal a line from “Saturday Night Live:” “King Airs been very, very…
As the picture above shows, the ailerons on the King Air 200- and 300-series models include a pronounced lump on their trailing edges. The official name for the lump is “Trailing Edge Bulge” but, to me, they are simply “lumps.” The ailerons on other King Air models don’t have the lump. Presenting the reason why…
On Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, I had the pleasure of trying out the ThrustSense Autothrottle system for the first time. IS&S is the abbreviation for Innovative Solutions and Support, the company that designed, tested and certified this system that adjusts power lever position to maintain a torque value or an airspeed value that the pilot…
This month’s article will cause you to put on your thinking caps and consider some King Air systems questions that you probably haven’t seen or heard before. I am going to present six questions to have you ponder for as long as you need, then I will provide my answers … the correct ones, I…
Author’s Note: This is a repeat of my article written for the December 2014 issue of this magazine. It also comprises the chapter starting on Page 307 of The King Air Book – Volume II. Obviously, I think it is important enough to review once more. Rarely do we pilots need to apply rapid and…
There’s not going to be anything new in this article. Every pilot who earned his or her multi-engine rating has undergone training in how to handle one-engine-inoperative (OEI) situations whenever they may occur. Yet, in recent years King Airs seem to have been involved in a rash of very serious, usually fatal, accidents during takeoff.…
The expanded, first-flight-of-the-day checklist procedures in the Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH) include a somewhat lengthy and hard-to-understand series of steps for confirming that the electrical system is fit for duty with all its safety devices operating properly. My guess is that this procedure is executed quite rarely and, when it is done, the pilot is…
Last month in my article regarding how to configure your King Air for in-flight icing encounters, I started reviewing the number of switches or push-pull controls that must be activated in icing conditions according to your POM/POH. To review, there are two or four switches to the left of the pilot’s control wheel: Two Engine…
This article is written in hopes that it will serve as a useful reminder about how to configure your King Air for in-flight icing encounters. If you have any significant amount of flight time in a King Air, I suppose that you have become quite comfortable with flying and handling the airplane in icing conditions.…
Have you ever seen this procedure described? I hope your answer is “Yes,” since it is the title of a procedure presented in the Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH). Quiz time: In what POH section will you find it? Section 3, Emergency Procedure? Section 3A, Abnormal Procedures? Or Section 4, Normal Procedures? I will wager that…