It’s tough for Jeff Lowe to fly his 1979 Beechcraft King Air C90 past an airport that is home to an aftermarket completion center. As co-founder and president of Aviation Fabricators – or AvFab – he knows each facility is a customer or prospective customer for the interior parts and components his company designs and…
Few things are more annoying than finding a puddle of fuel on the hangar floor the morning after a flight. A B200 I was consulting on recently manifested just that. Fuel leaks that crop up suddenly can result from recent maintenance where a seal wasn’t seated properly or where a fitting was left loose. Another…
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…
Throughout its illustrious history, the Beech Aircraft Corporation has distinguished itself as one of the world’s premier manufacturers of general aviation airplanes by consistently setting the pace for competitors to follow. Early in 1932, Curtiss-Wright engineer Theodore “Ted” Wells was completing the design of a cabin biplane featuring a powerful static, air-cooled radial engine and…
Pilot Proficient has developed an online King Air 200/B200 familiarization course designed for the pilot who is transitioning into the King Air 200 and covers pertinent aircraft systems, limitations, operating characteristics and tips and tricks. The course includes multimedia presentations, in-cockpit video demonstrations and an interactive aircraft systems section to illustrate the concepts, with quizzes…
Canadian based aircraft parts distributor KADEX Aero Supply, has chosen PWI in Wichita, Kansas, to be a worldwide, in-stock distributor for the KADEX LED Wing Tip Light Assembly. KADEX’s LED Wing Tip Light Assembly is STC approved and designed for the Beechcraft King Air 350 aircraft. The LED Wing Tip Light Assembly is five times…
I’m not sure I’m up for the challenge. Ever think that? I rarely do. I’m typically very confident in life and in business. But we all have those moments of doubt and for me they seem to come up every year about mid-January. That’s when I get an email from Kim Blonigen, the editor of…
If you haven’t already registered, you may want to as spots are filling up for the King Air Gathering (KAG) being held May 12-14 at the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Below is a summary of the speakers and evening activities: Thursday, May 12: Those flying their King Airs to the event will land…
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…
Ted Wells never intended his Model 17 to fight a war, but when duty called the Staggerwing served American and Allied forces worldwide with distinction. The first Model 17 to wear “war paint” was C17R-115, designated as a JB-1 by the United States Navy when it entered service in 1936. Always in search of sales,…