Page 14 - Volume 14 Number 4

Besides the striking looks with the T-tail and short body, Mark Baker likes the bigger engines and bigger fuel capacity of the King Air F90. “All in, at altitude, it has like six hours of fuel, five hours you can fly with and an hour of reserve,” he said.
Mark Baker’s 1980 King Air F90 already had Garmin › glass flight deck retrofits installed, including dual
G600 touchscreens and GTN 750 navigator.
T-tail of the King Air 200 with the fuselage and wings of the E90 and added 400 more horsepower than the C90 at the time.
“I was inspired by a friend, Jim Krivida, who has had his F90 for 25 years, and I’m the only other guy he’s ever let fly it,” Baker said. “I looked at it over and over and knew I loved the look and feel of that airplane. I had decided one of these days I would buy one.”
It wasn’t an easy decision to give up the extra speed of the Citation but the King Air fit his current commuting needs better. He uses it to commute to the Washington, D.C., area from homes in Florida and Minnesota and uses it often for recreational flying. He’s flown it to the Virgin Islands, pheasant hunting in South Dakota, a winter trip to the Bahamas, and he took it for a ski trip in Colorado with his sons in early March.
“We get there just a little slower but I really like the way people in the back like riding in the King Air. They rave about it,” Baker said. “Plus, I enjoy the way it flies and there’s something cool about being up front with a
12 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
handful of throttles and the propellers turning around you. It’s a nostalgic feel and I kind of consider this a retro airplane.”
It might feel retro but it doesn’t look it. In the nine months he’s owned it, he’s put in a new interior featuring rich, brown leather and repainted the exterior with the modern scheme of a black tail and big red ‘B,’ which he jokes stands for Baker. While the King Air was in for paint, he had Raisbeck aft body strakes installed.
“The strakes took quite a bit of the wag out that these short-body models are known to have,” Baker said. “It was a big job but it was well worth it. The passengers are happier and I’m happier. The airplane already had
APRIL 2020
›