Page 21 - April 2015 Volume 9, Number 4

the 200, with its relatively long body and T-tail, does this crazy technique work. In the 90- and 100-series, the conventional placement of the horizontal stabilizer down on the fuselage puts the elevators in a position where the airflow over them is decreased as blade angle flattens, making it virtually impossible to hold the nose up for a satisfying touchdown. (The T-tailed F90 is definitely not a floater and this illegal technique is never needed, even though the elevators could hold the nose up!)
But what if the flare was misjudged, too high? What if the pilot pulled back a little too far into Beta? What if one propeller responded much differently than the other one? All of these “what ifs” can lead to expensive bent metal as the airplane lands too harshly and/or touches down significantly misaligned with the direction of travel, leading to excessive landing gear side-loads.
Here’s a sad, but true, story. One of the first 10 model 300s was damaged beyond economical repair during a factory training flight. The transitioning pilot reverted to this in-flight Beta selection technique out of the habit he’d developed while flying his company’s previous King Air 200. What he failed to realize – and what the factory instructor could not save in time – was that the 300, unlike the 200, has both a Ground and a Flight Low Pitch Stop (LPS) and the simple action of picking the power levers straight up – not even pulling them aft –
makes the LPS flatten by about 12 degrees! Wham! The airplane basically fell out the sky and hit so hard that, among other damage, all eight propeller blade tips were bent back when the engine mounts sagging so much that the blades made ground contact! You never, ever, want to do this horrid procedure while landing a 300 or 350!
What if we are not landing though? What if there’s a fire in the cabin that we cannot extinguish, we are doing the correct emergency descent procedure, yet we want to get down even faster? Couldn’t we use some Beta now to get more drag, yet of course return to normal operation long before we hit mother earth? (Before continuing with the next paragraph, give yourself a little mental pop quiz. Would or would not this procedure help in obtaining a greater rate of descent?)
You’re wasting effort doing this and all you will possibly achieve is a badly mis-adjusted Low Pitch Stop setting.
I often state, “A pilot cannot force the propeller to reverse, he can only allow it to reverse.” Beta and Reverse are achieved simply because the power lever controls the position of the LPS. You can move the LPS, yes, but will the blade angle follow that moving LPS?
It all depends on whether power and airspeed are both sufficiently low that propeller speed has decreased, and fallen below the selected propeller governor’s value.
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APRIL 2015
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 19