Page 16 - Volume 12, Number 7

GEAR: Its handle was placed in the up position and the gear started retracting.
IDENTIFY: “Left foot is dead; left torque is dead.” The pilot correctly noted.
VERIFY: The pilot moved the left power lever carefully back to idle and made certain that nothing changed. (Except it triggered the gear warning horn to blow. That’s why I teach moving it back forward if you have used this as an identification step.) By now, we had lost about 500 feet, nearing 6,700 feet MSL. The sink rate was near zero but with the windmilling propeller we certainly were not yet climbing. “This fellow is doing a great job,” I thought to myself. “He’s maintaining a safe speed and is doing the correct procedure expeditiously but without rushing. Nice!”
FEATHER: Then the doodoo hit the fan! The pilot kept his hand on the left power lever that he had just moved to idle, lifted it and immediately pulled it into maximum reverse, all the way aft.
I wish we had smart phones with video capabilities back then, because I would love to see both the expression on my face and the exact reaction of the airplane. It seemed we pivoted around that reversed propeller, turned 90 degrees to the left, and pealed off into a dive with maybe a 15- to 20-degree, nose- down attitude. I immediately pulled the right power lever to idle, pushed the left power lever forward out of reverse to idle and eased out of the dive. Then it was back to using the Four Friends – Power, Props, Flaps and Gear – to get us back in the groove for the correct feathering step. I pitched up to get to VYSE and tried to get my heart rate back to normal. Was I surprised? You bet! Scared? No, that’s why we do this well above the ground. We probably bottomed out at about 6,000 feet, a total loss of 1,200 from when we began the go-around.
I returned aircraft control to the pilot, we leveled off at 7,500 feet, turned on the autopilot and completed the engine shutdown checklist. The pilot knew exactly
what had transpired – he had moved the power lever into reverse instead of the propeller lever into feather.
“Why?” I asked. “Because when my eyes saw the red and white stripes of reverse, my mind thought they were the red and white stripes of feather,” he said. Never before or since have I had this happen in training ... that someone would pull the wrong lever back into the stripes. The event taught both the pilot and myself an important lesson. The pilot: Not to use the wrong lever! Me: To teach my students that the cockpit coloration is indeed the same, so be careful! Also, one more reason to not keep the dead power lever back at idle. Get it forward out of the way!
All King Airs being produced now no longer have the red and white stripes denoting reverse. Instead, they have the “Ground Fine” stop at the end of beta and at the start of reverse. Now it requires a second lift of the power lever to enter reverse. It has been this way on most models since the late 1980s, early 1990s. This change was not made based on the incident related here, but it should help in decreasing the probability for making the same mistake in the later models.
I want to clarify a point or two. First, for the blade angle to go into beta or reverse, the propeller must be underspeeding ... off of the propeller governor, with the blade angle resting on the Low Pitch Stop (LPS). After all, beta and reverse is simply where the power lever’s position has relocated the LPS to flatter than normal angles. With the combination of zero power and an airspeed near 100 KIAS, the left propeller was definitely underspeeding on its LPS.
Second, although the blade angle went to maximum reverse, realize that the fuel was shut off. We had no reverse power, just one heckuva lot of drag! The situation would have been worse and we would likely have lost significantly more altitude had the engine “failure” been initiated by moving the power lever to Idle instead of shutting the fuel off with the condition lever. If the power lever had now been moved to maximum reverse, not only would blade angle have gone fully negative, but
the N1 also should have spooled up to near 85 percent, giving close to 50 percent power.
You’re starting to understand why I got white hair at such a young age, right?
A BE-100 and a BE-A100 Story
It is common for pilots to think of the Garrett-powered B100 when they hear “King Air 100.” However, before the B100 model, there was the “straight” 100 and the A100, both powered by PT6A-28s rated at 680
14 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JULY 2018