Page 21 - Volume 10 Number 9

KING AIR
WINDOW INSERTS
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It is understandable why so many King Air pilots incorrectly believe that the red handle lights are “disagreement” lights, telling them that the gear handle position and the actual gear position do not agree. Of course, every time we move the landing gear handle from one position to the other, we expect to see the red lights illuminate until all gear legs have properly reached their new positions, and then the lights extinguish. So when disagreement exists, we have the lights. True, but that is not what is triggering them. You see, what if the gear never moved at all? What if we have a tripped CB or a bad motor so that when we move the handle nothing happens? We certainly have disagreement now, right? But we won’t have red lights. At least one of the gear legs has to move enough to deactivate its uplock or downlock switch before the red lights will appear. That is why, technically, they are not disagreement lights, but truly are in transit lights.
In addition to the in transit trigger mechanism of the red handle lights, we have said that the other trigger is “unsafe.” What exactly does that mean?
Unsafe, in this context, means that we may be getting ready to land and yet all three gear legs are not fully in the down and locked position. Unless you are willing to touch down extremely fast, it is rather difficult to land an airplane while a lot of power is still being applied. So the King Air series – just like almost every other retractable gear airplane – has a landing gear warning horn system that is triggered by the combination of low throttle (power lever) position and “not down” gear position. Inside the power quadrant in the cockpit, both the left and the right power levers activate switches when those levers are not well forward. Depending upon your exact model and serial number, these may be set for an N1 of about 79 percent to as high as 86 percent. (TPE331 powered B100s? Oh, about half-way from Flight Idle to Full Forward.) Keep in mind this is power lever position only, not actual engine power output.
In the King Air, the designers decided to include the red handle lights into this warning horn system. When the horn sounds, the lights illuminate ... a double indication that landing is not advised yet! As you know, the obnoxious horn may be silenced with a button – since it is not at all uncommon in the turbine-powered airplanes to intentionally pull power back so far as to trigger the warning during some descents – but the red lights remain lit until either the power levers are moved forward past the switches or all three gear legs activate their downlock switches.
In the mid-1970s, the FAA changed the rules and required that another mechanism be added to trigger the “gear unsafe” warning. Apparently there had been a few close calls or actual gear-up landings that followed a too low, too slow, airplane fully dirty, “drag it in” type of landing approach. Overcoming so much drag, the power being applied was above that which triggered the warning.
SEPTEMBER 2016
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 19