Page 18 - Nov 2015 Volume 9, Number 11

In a few years, the furor had died down, Beech had come out with the totally new lower forward wing attach fitting for King Airs, in which the bolt goes through “knuckles” and is now under shear, not tension, load, and the “need” for any type of strap faded away.
The second question comes from pilot Chris Donnelly. He writes, “When parking the airplane after a flight, I always move the prop levers back into the full forward position after shutdown has been fully completed, before I put the control locks into place.
I have been doing this for about 20 years now and have never found a reason not to. It’s just my personal way of leaving the aircraft until I return for the next flight. Most guys are taught to leave the prop levers in feather until the next flight, but my reasoning was that you have to push them forward before you initiate the start anyway, so why not return them to that position once you have completed a normal engine shut down? I have never noticed any difference in the start in any way, whether they were moved forward just before start, or whether they were left that way overnight.
This is something I have wondered about, but no one has ever been able to explain exactly why the POH recommends leaving the levers in feather after shutdown is complete.”
There is absolutely no reason that your habit is bad in any way, Chris. It is my guess that the checklist is written as it is so that a pilot in a rush to exit the cockpit and get to the cabin door to aid the passengers’ egress does not place the prop levers back forward too soon, before the props have stopped, which could lead them to start partially unfeathering again. But so long as they have truly stopped – or darn close to it – then there is no downside. I, too, often do it your way, just getting one step ahead of the game for the next start. (Although there are times I start in feather, to reduce noise and prop wash.)
In fact, I see one tiny advantage of your procedure: As you may recall, the prop governor has a spring that is always trying to push the speed select lever to maximum RPM, so if the cable connection ever comes loose, the governor will go to and maintain maximum speed. So you are placing that spring in its natural, relaxed state, rather than leaving it stretched to its limit. Take that, naysayers!
Matthew Robinson wrote, “I have a question for Tom regarding the electric landing gear systems in King Airs versus the hydraulic systems that replaced them around 1984 and after. Are the electric systems more failure prone, or at least more maintenance sensitive with frequent replacement of motors, switches, wires, and retraction chain for the front gear?”
No, I don’t think there is a significant reliability difference between the electromechanical and
16 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2015