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Glide Ratio of a King Air?

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Karen

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Nov 15, 2010, 12:41:14 PM11/15/10
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See:http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20101115/NEWS/311150009/
Pilot-says-plane-became-glider-after-it-ran-out-of-gas

Greenville last Monday. Wings look pretty skinny.Engines look real
big.

He credits his glider training. Why not require glider ratings for
every ATP?

Karen

Darryl Ramm

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Nov 15, 2010, 1:02:09 PM11/15/10
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Recurrent training with some focus on boring things like pre-flight
inspections, fuel management, and in this case some reviews of flight
line operations procedures would probably be more worthwhile.

Darryl

mike martin

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Nov 15, 2010, 2:12:28 PM11/15/10
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I wasn't there, but unless something truly abnormal happened to the
airplane, it's a pretty safe bet that poor planning and bad decision
making led to this incident. It is this same thought process you read
about in many of the glider accidents. Poor planning, poor decision
making, and poor saftey management resulting in a wrecked glider. The
best training and skill set will not overcome bad mental habits.

Mike


20flyer

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Nov 15, 2010, 2:29:19 PM11/15/10
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Other than the obvious poor planning....
A King Air has a pretty decent L/D once the props are feathered.
Don't
feather and it does come down, like right now. Depending on the
model,
L/D of King Air series can be anywhere from 13/1 up to about 17/1.
We could feather both on a KA90 (engines can still be running with
feathered props), slow to best L/D speed of around 110 knots, and the
sink would settle around 800fpm. Drop gear and approach flaps and
sink
would go to about 12-1300fpm. If you unfeathered the props then,
sink
could increase 4-5000 fpm, kind of like a 20 with full flaps and
spoilers...
The longer wing 200 series was actually better than a 90....
Ah, the old days....

Steve

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