AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - February 2015 - T-16

and chaff dispensers. Still other 350ERs see
duty as air ambulances, aerial survey platforms, and navaid inspections systems. And
yes, the executive version-the 350iER-is
usually fitted out with eight plush, swiveling leather seats.
BIG-RIG FEATURES

A quick walkaround showcases the ER's
special design and systems elements. To
handle the ship's extra weight, the landing gear have been beefed up. This includes
sturdier struts and drag links, plus larger
and thicker tires. A brake-heating system,
fed by engine bleed air, keeps rotors and
pads free of ice and is also standard. In all,
the heavied-up landing gear add 90 pounds
to the ship's empty weight.

One Canadian owner likes to fly groups from California
to Hawaii, and then use the airplane to visit islands
within the chain.

HEAVY DUTY LANDING GEAR,

tires, and heated brakes (right,
top left) are standard on all
ERs. A new fuel control panel
(top right) is modified to
accommodate the ER's two
extra 118-gallon nacelle fuel
tanks. The center pedestal
(lower left) has an annunciator
panel, pressurization gauges,
powerplant and trim controls,
and the Pro Line 21's dual
keypads. The mini-airfoil at the
rudder's trailing edge (center
right) boosts control authority
in engine-out situations.
Redesigned exhaust-stack
installation (below right)
includes a fairing designed to
reduce drag and soot deposits
on the nacelles.

T-16 | AOPA PILOT February 2015

For that off-runway approval, there are
large Kevlar panels on the undersides of the
inboard wing area, erosion-resistant tape on
the leading edges of belly-mounted antennas, and a metal cage around the belly's
rotating beacon. As for the engines ingesting
dirt and other foreign objects, their inertial
separators take care of the job by routing
debris away from engine induction air and
send it overboard via what is in essence a
trap door.
You can't miss the distinctive shape
of the nacelle fuel tanks, which contain
the ER's extra fuel-118 gallons per side. A
redesigned fuel control panel keeps track
of the increased maximum fuel load. The
fuel system has three fuel tanks per side:
main, auxiliary, and the ER's nacelle tank.
Normally, the nacelle tanks draw fuel first,
then the auxiliary tanks and then the mains,
which use gravity feed and motive-flow
pumps to move fuel to collector tanks before
being sent to the engines.
The ER also has a new environmental
system, one with vapor cycle air conditioning that uses two condensors and two
evaporators for faster cabin temperature
drawdowns in hot weather. There are also
more gaspers/Wemacs in the newer models of all 350s.
To boost rudder effectiveness in engineout situations, a spanwise, airfoil-shaped
strip is attached to the rudder's trailing
edge. This "tricks" the rudder into behaving as though its area is enlarged, according

to Roger Hubble, Textron's senior vice president for special missions. A similar strip is
on the airplane's left aileron, as is the case
with all other 350s.
And what happens should an engine
lose power? Its igniters will come on automatically as soon as torque drops below 17
percent. If that doesn't work, and torque
decreases further, the propeller autofeathers. When sensors detect asymmetric
torque, an electronic servo actuation system
automatically applies the correct amount of
rudder deflection to help the pilot compensate for the associated yawing moments.
A LONG CROSS-COUNTRY

N350KA is a 350ER special-missions demonstrator that's been making the rounds
worldwide. A few months ago it was in
Wichita, at the Beech Factory Field, which
gave us the opportunity to test it.
The nonstop trip was from Beech
Factory Field to AOPA's home base at the
Frederick Municipal Airport in Maryland-a
distance of 948 nm on our cleared route.
Demonstration pilot Luke Scott fed the
numbers into the Rockwell Collins Pro
Line 21 before startup: A +5-degree Celsius
outside air temperature and a field elevation of 1,408 feet, a takeoff weight of 14,820
pounds, with five and bags aboard-and
an interior designed to show off a hybrid
setup, one with forward club seating and
an aft section set up with single-stretcher
air ambulance gear. (The airplane is capable
of handling two stretchers). Our V1 came up
as 106 knots, VR was 110 knots, and V2 was
117 knots. Our balanced-field takeoff length
was 4,680 feet. Those are light jet numbers.
For takeoff, it was push up the power
levers until the torque values were just shy
of redline, release the brakes, and monitor
torque as the airplane stormed down the
runway and ram air pushed torque slightly
upwards. All King Airs are non-FADEC (full
authority digital engine controls) airplanes,
meaning, among other things, that the pilot
must manually ensure that torque limits and
interturbine temperature redlines aren't
exceeded. There are no computers to automatically suppress redline excursions, or
automatically shut down an engine during
a hot start.
Initially, our climb rate was 2,500 fpm.
Passing through 24,000 feet, the climb rate
held strong at 1,400 fpm. Altogether, using
a cruise-climb airspeed of 170 knots, it took
us 22 minutes to reach our cruise altitude of
31,000 feet. There, conditions were ISA +2
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - February 2015

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