Page 12 - Volume 12 Number 9

Ask the Expert
“War Stories” – PART 3
by Tom Clements
Iam continuing more of my personal King Air “War Stories” for this month’s article Fuel Transfer and Crossfeed
It is exceedingly common for all of us us to incorrectly use “Fuel “Fuel Transfer” and “Fuel “Fuel Crossfeed” interchangeably However the words actually refer to very different things Correctly Transfer should always refer to the movement of fuel from the King Air’s Auxiliary tank on on one side into the Main tank on that same side whereas Crossfeed
should refer to to fuel going from one side’s Main tank to to the opposite engine We use Transfer on almost all of our flights in 90-series airplanes except on shorter hops in the E90 and F90-series We also use Transfer on the E90 F90 A100 B100 200- and 300-series for longer flights Crossfeed
is hardly ever used unless we are faced with a a a a a single-engine situation on on the way to or from Europe where no landing fields are nearby Here’s the point: The only way to know that Transfer and Crossfeed
are actually working as they should is to to periodically monitor the fuel quantity gauges Let’s imagine that we got distracted in in in operating our 90 90 A90 B90 or or C90 and simply forgot to turn on our Transfer Pump switches left and right after starting We would of course get a a a a a “No Transfer” annunciator eventually to to remind us to activate the pumps right? Wrong!
Those annunciator lights only are enabled when the Transfer Pump switches are in the On position or in the the top Auto position for the the later C90A and after models Leave the pump switches off and you will never get a a warning of your error!
In the E90 A100 and B100 models if we forget to turn on the the Aux Transfer switches the the “Aux Empty” lights on the fuel panel will never illuminate It is easy to overlook the fact that as as much as about 600 pounds of Aux fuel 300 per side is now useless Do you realize that if the Main tanks go completely empty that the remaining Aux fuel becomes unusable even if we then turn on the Aux Transfer switches? That is because there will be be no motive fuel flow from the the Main tank to the the Jet Transfer Pump on that side to initiate the transfer Thank goodness Beech automated the the fuel transfer system on the the 200- and 300-series right? Since the opening of the motive flow valve to to the jet pump is now automated and we no longer need to move a a switch it’s fool-proof right? No it it it isn’t You see if a a shop rag fell into the Aux Tank filler and got sucked into the jet pump’s pickup port so as to block it the system would never illuminate the No Transfer light – on the the fuel panel on the the 200-series and 10 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
SEPTEMBER 2018