Awesome story, thanks for sharing!
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You are making me all melancholy for the B200 now… I guess I was lucky in that all the King Air’s I flew had decent enough autopilots, but I look at a photo of the cockpit now, especially with the old school panel with that big mechanical Sperry ADI run entirely with PFM and it amazes me that I could actually fly it… 
It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years now since I last flew one.
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I haven’t flown one in several years, and would have to go back to recurrent before I’d feel comfortable as PIC on one. I know what you mean though; every once in a while I do miss flying them.
They’re great big loud, noisy machines that operated down in the Wx and icing and bumps, and they kept me busy all the time managing prop sync and cabin pressurization and all the other things that just work on a CJ. Most of them problems with ours were that the aircraft was just plum wore out; and our Mx folks unfortunately had a lot of “CND” replies to pilot squawks.
All of the baggage has to be hauled up the steps by the pilot, and most of our trips seemed to be ski trips where people packed like they were moving permanently, made me feel wore out before I’d even started. But they are absolutely fun to fly. They hand fly like a dream (which is good because our AP’s were 
)
I shouldn’t miss it, and I don’t miss having a job flying them, but I do miss the flying part of it. Beech knows how to build a pilots airplane!
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Man…I’ve lived the life of a King! All three of our King Airs had cup holders. They are kind of hard to find…they exist(ed) on our planes (and still in our last B200 that we still have) at the rear of the center pedestal. Sort of a Mickey Mouse fold down tray that converted into two cup holders. I can’t remember if it has a bottom for the cups, or if they just hang there…daring someone who puts one with too small a diameter into it only to have it take the lid off and have the rest of the cup freefall the eight or so inches to the floor… 
Great story too!
Oh.here is an internet photo that shows a B200 with the aforementioned cup holders…they are on the right at the rear of the center pedestal…that tray pulls up and extends flat…
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Lol, this post brought back memories of that exact thing almost happening to me the first time I tried to use those! One of our B200’s had cup holders there at the back of the center console, although ours looked a bit different, as if perhaps a cover had been knocked off and gone missing. The others did not; I have no idea if they’d been removed or were never installed, but all of ours were pretty old, the newest one was from the second Reagan administration.
Further off-topic ramblings...
On further inspection, I believe that pic may be a newer 250, since it appears to have the Collins ProLine 21, and also the center console cover/table thingy (what was that for, anyway??). Not sure, the company acquired a brand new 250 around 2013, and I got to fly it a few times before I left, but not enough to remember the cupholders.
I do remember that the ProLine didn’t really do much for you, unlike the ProLine 21 in a CJ3.
It wasn’t integrated, so you still had to manually punch in speeds and tune nav frequencies. Kinda felt like you were dragging the box along with you as opposed to it doing the work and you just pushing buttons.
I did like that it had torque limiters, but hated the engine instruments because they combined everything into one gauge for each engine, with different need pointers for props, ITT and torque, so I really had to study them a second before I could tell what I was looking at. The interior was super nice though, and had that new airplane smell, which was cool.
The bad news was that it had a 1000 lbs higher empty weight than a 200, and the same gross weight of 12,500. I couldn’t go non-stop to Elkhart, IN with 5 pax and baggage one time, had to leave some poor soul behind!
ETA- Since this is a photo thread, here’s a beautiful B200 sitting on the ramp that I’m drooling over and kinda wishing I could borrow to go fly pattern work for a bit, and in the background the CJ I’m about to hop in and take up to the service center for some inspections. Couldn’t have a nicer day for it here!
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What could possibly go wrong…? 
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What a lovely day. No work and I get to fly with the national treasure himself
Mr @Scoop!!! Awesome!!
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- The best part is when someone brings a coffee…and DOESN’T DRINK IT…so by the end of the flight you have a brimming cup full of cold coffee waiting at the exit of the cockpit. Honestly…they should build anti-personnel mines out of coffee cups. Have you ever seen 8 ounces of coffee booted out of a cup holder into the aisle of a King Air? There is a reason they put a plastic cover over the current limiters under the floorboard…
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There is a reason they put a plastic cover over the current limiters under the floorboard…
Oh gosh, those stupid current limiters had enough trouble without having liquid spilled on them! 
At lease they have storm windows to casually pour a cup or coffee out of when nobody’s looking…
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When I first started flying King Airs…my boss would hold his lit cigarette out that window…haha…my how times have changed.
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Yes they have! Some ways much better than others, lol!
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10k flying hours and you become one by default. Add that to all the other things you’ve accomplished and I’m surprised you haven’t been knighted 
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Congrats gentlemen. Would have loved to have been a fly inside that canopy.
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Did you fly with Andrew McCubbin in Scotland too
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Beechcraft was much more forward thinking than Cessna at the time. The King Air window was large enough to hand a standard size clipboard through…the Citation’s was not. Not that I ever forgot my clipboard in the office…I’m just saying if I HAD left it in the office and if someone had to hand it through the window…ya’ know…
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That is a crazy temperature spread on that cold front sweeping across the United States the last day or so. I was sitting next to the pool, swimming to cool off today and just 60 miles away it was in the low 40s…!
We’ve had our garden out for over two weeks and a freeze warning is in effect for tonight…argh…gotta go cover stuff…
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And on the King Air there were no external baggage compartments that could be inadvertently left unlocked and forgotten about until the pre-start annunciator panel check…
Not that I’ve ever done that with passengers aboard and had to make the walk of shame…
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Oh…I’ve gotten all the way to engines running and not noticed that light. On the Ultra…it is an amber light that blends in perfectly with the Pitot Static/Stand-by P/S and LOW IDLE annunciators. I wish they had made that one a yellow or red one. Extra fun if it is the rear one and you gotta go back next to that screaming left engine. I think I did it once holding near the Y11 hold block for 30 at Dulles once. That was a long time ago…I think if you get out of your plane there these days they would shoot you and ask questions later. I’m not sure how many SMS reports a bullet-ridden FO would get me…but I’ll bet it is more than one submission…
There’s that crappy one. Tailcone door…right under the normally lit P/S HTR L/R…argh…
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