Page 17 - April 2022

our Duke instructor in both flying and maintenance, bilingual in English and Spanish; Scott Hutchinson, King Air maintenance instructor; and me, who was taking over from Don Peterson, the model 90-series instructor, who had been promoted to the head of Beech’s own Air Transportation Division.
Wow! What an exciting environment I was thrust into! Back in those days, the pilot instructors taught in the classroom and in the airplane. I had served over four years in the Navy, starting right after college. For all my life, I was nearsighted and had astigmatism. Although prescription glasses brought me up to clear vision, I knew that military and airline flying was not in the cards for my future. (Lasik eye surgery in the early 1990s made for miraculous improvement!)
But the Navy assigned me to a very unusual billet: an instructor in the Nuclear Power School, teaching the enlisted and officer staff who would be operating the nuclear powerplants on the submarines and aircraft carriers that were so-powered. My degree in Mechanical Engineering was why they felt I was suited for this billet, and it was a satisfying four years that I taught at “Nuke School” at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California.
Having most weekends and many evenings free and not being married yet, I used that time to get most of my advanced flying licenses. I had soloed and obtained my PPL back in 1962 as a high school junior. Airplanes and flying had been my passion for as long as I could remember. Once equipped with my CFI rating, I instructed part-time at Sonoma Skypark – a one-runway, 2,500-foot, paved strip a few miles west of the Napa VOR. By the time my four-year enlistment was completed, I had about 1,500 total hours in my logbook.
With such relatively low time and with no Beechcraft experience whatsoever, why the heck did I get hired by the Beechcraft Training Center?! My low flight experience was offset by my extensive ground school teaching experience at Nuke School, or at least Don Cary thought so. I guess he was right since I’ve been at it ever since.
I had never flown a King Air until getting checked out by Don Cary and Alan Roberts in the first few months of my Beech employment. Wow was I a novice, barely one step ahead of my first students! But it seemed to be a good “fit,” and I rapidly advanced in the Training Center to become the senior pilot instructor after a couple of years and then the Center’s manager when Don Cary got promoted to be the head of Beech’s Parts and Service operation.
The growth in aviation in the 1970s was astounding. Beech kept ramping up the production schedule and eventually, we were making over 30 King Airs a month. This boom continued until the early ‘80s and then the shoe dropped. I think the GAMA (General Aviation Manufacturer’s Association) total delivery numbers went
APRIL 2022
“The growth in aviation in the 1970s was astounding ... eventually, we were making over 30 King Airs a month.”
from 17,000 airplanes to 1,700 airplanes in the course of a couple of years. It has never recovered to the halcyon days of the middle and late ’70s.
But enough of this. In the remainder of this article, I’d like to tell you about the 90-series with which I was initially associated. It is astounding to know of the many and rapid improvements that Beech quickly implemented on the good ol’ BE-90. For filing flight plans, it is a Be9L (Be9T for the F90 series).
Ever heard of the Model 87 Beechcraft? Probably not. But it was the first PT6-powered, twin-engine Beechcraft. It was a Queen Air – Lycoming powered, unpressurized, executive transport – now fitted with the first version of the PT6 ... the PT6A-6 powerplant. This engine was capable of 550 shaft horsepower (SHP), but Beech decided that 500 SHP would be enough. After all, the Queen Air model 80 had a mere 380 SHP. By marking the torque redline at 1,190 ft-lbs. instead of the 1,315 that the gearbox could handle, the power reduction was achieved. Holding 500 SHP at hotter and higher elevation airports was more likely to be achieved than pulling the full 550 SHP. But don’t be led to think this was a major flat rating of the -6. Oh no! Because of temperature limits, full torque could rarely be achieved except on colder days at lower elevations.
And speaking of temperature limits, the -6, unlike any subsequent PT6, measured exhaust gas temperature at engine station 4, the compressor turbine inlet. This is the location of the highest, most critical, exhaust gas temperature since it measures the temperature of the exhaust before any energy has been extracted to drive the Compressor Turbine (CT) or the Power Turbine (PT). Monitoring this highest, most critical temperature location in the engine made sense, so TIT – Turbine Inlet Temperature – was what the pilot could see in the cockpit of -6-powered airplanes. Unfortunately, it was quickly found that the TIT probes didn’t last long. They got too hot and failed quickly. Temperatures in the 900°C range were common.
The solution to these rapidly failing TIT probes was to relocate the probes from the inlet of the compressor
(Continued on page 18) KING AIR MAGAZINE • 15