After six years of tremendous success designing, manufacturing and selling airplanes, the Travel Air Company and its leader, Walter H. Beech, became cogs in the aeronautical wheel of fortune known as the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. Late in 1929, only months before the stock market collapse on Wall Street, an organization was formed by the merger of…
King Air interior lighting specialists, PWI, recently announced the FAA Approval of their Window Light LED Upgrade on B200/250 models. This STC approval was highly welcomed by the company as well as King Air B200/250 operators as it has already been certified for all other King Air models. The LED upgrade easily replaces the installed…
Garmin® International Inc. announced that the popular GI 275 electronic flight instrument has received European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) approval, allowing installation in over 1,000 single-engine and multi-engine aircraft models. Several variants of the GI 275 are available to meet the needs of business and general aviation aircraft. A powerful electronic flight instrument, the…
Hampton Aviation of Mena, Arkansas, was recently authorized to be dealer and installer of two well-known aviation products and systems, Airtext and Avidyne. Airtext allows passengers to stay connected electronically worldwide by voice or email for a much lower cost than a traditional internet option. Through the Iridium Next Satellite Network, Airtext allows connectivity through…
I already know what most readers are thinking, “Why should I care about VORs anymore?” Global Positioning System (GPS) has become the default form of navigation for all segments of general aviation (GA), while ILS and RNAV/GPS (with vertical guidance) approaches have become the norm at both large and small airports. Chances are, most of…
Mark your calendars to attend The King Air Gathering (KAG) 2021 being held at The Beechcraft Museum, situated adjacent to the Tullahoma, Tennessee, Regional Airport (THA), Sept. 23-26. King Air owners and operators who have attended previous Gatherings enjoy the knowledge they get from the educational speakers, being able to talk one-on-one to King Air-specific…
It’s a tribute to the King Air brand that so many are still flying today after 30 or even 40 years since manufactured; but the longer an airplane is “alive and kicking” the greater the opportunity for development of corrosion. When assessing the condition of any King Air, I’ve got the possibility of corrosion uppermost…
FAA Issues Order Authorizing Pilots to Receive COVID-19 Vaccine Following the Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Pfizer, Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine in mid-December, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) determined that pilots may receive the vaccine under the conditions of their FAA-issued airman medical certification. Without such an order, pilots…
A student who was going through initial King Air training once said to me, “I felt comfortable flying the King Air in an hour, but it took about a month to learn how to start the SOB!” I think we would all agree that the King Air – all the various models – are delightful…
Cessna Aircraft Company’s experimental C-106, P-7 and P-10 were designed and developed amidst the fury of World War II but failed to progress beyond the prototype stage. During the winter of 1940, western Europe was quiet. Poland had fallen to the Nazis, part of Finland was under Soviet control and a brief but tranquil three-month…