Due to unprecedented circumstances during these unpredictable COVID-19 times, the King Air Gathering (KAG), scheduled to take place October 22-24 in Wichita, Kansas, has been postponed to a yet to be determined date in 2021. Safety is a strong foundation that pilots live by and based on what local, state and federal officials are recommending…
Instrument procedure charts are not the sole domain of Jeppesen (now a Boeing company). Various governmental agencies and private companies have produced competing charts for decades. Yet, Jeppesen (Jepp) charts have long been the gold standard in Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) procedure publications for turbine aircraft operators the world over. They’ve always presented the detailed…
Wichita businessmen, friends share ownership of King Air 200 A regular reader of King Air magazine, Tim Buchanan always enjoys the columns written by Edward H. Phillips. “I find them very interesting and full of great historical facts and people,” Buchanan said. “I appreciate having this globally distributed magazine tell the history of my hometown.”…
There is a premise among professional pilots that some FAA rules are intentionally vague and often open to interpretation in order to provide operational flexibility (within reason). For years, such has been the case with runway condition assessments and braking action reports. For example, most pilots who have operated under Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) Part…
Bert Bollar has been flying Beechcraft King Airs since 1983 and has flown N88JH, a 1989 King Air B200, for the past 19 years. He calls the airplane a member of his family and considers its owners part of his family, too. “I have a dream job because after this long, I’m treated as family…
In Part 1, the article left off with GPS failures that would affect both primary and secondary GPS units (such as failures related to shared antennas, identical software bugs, satellite outages, or the loss of shared power sources or cooling equipment). In such cases, being able to revert to “old school” forms of navigation can…
[Author’s Note: This two-part series will discuss a variety of navigation system failures and abnormalities, with ideas for training and handling them. While this installment will deal primarily with management of GPS abnormalities, the next installment will focus on the utilization of other navigation systems in GPS failure situations.] It was a blustery spring afternoon…
Stacy Wilson, vice president of Wilson Construction, grew up in the electric utility construction business. Her grandfather, Matt O. Wilson, started building power lines in 1952 to connect farms in rural Oregon and Washington to the electrical grid. Stacy’s father and current Wilson Construction president, Don Wilson, joined the company in 1974. Early in his…
In the February issue of King Air magazine, in Dean Benedict’s maintenance article titled “Wing Bolts,” the photo displaying two wing bolts (pictured again below) shows one in tension (top) and one in shear (bottom). The bolt in shear has the brassy stripes. It was held in place by “fingers” that gradually wear off the…
Runny nose, irritated and watery eyes, sneezing and general stuffiness are symptoms we all experience from time to time. These symptoms result from the release of a chemical called histamine from specific cells of our immune systems as a response to an external irritant or allergen. Histamine has many physiologic effects, including dilating blood vessels,…