I always found the aircraft to be somewhat squirrely especially on t/o and landings as you can't have the yaw damper on like you can in some larger turboprops. This always makes your rudder/coordination work noticeable as the plane has some pretty good tail wag. You do get used it pretty fast and eventually really don't notice it anymore. Your footwork on the rudders gets to become second nature and keeping it straight gets easy. Once the yaw damper is on it hand flies very nice. You get it trimmed out and you can fly it with hands off the yoke and the trim wheel only in smooth air.

It's not a great aircraft for turbulence as its gotta stiff wing so you feel every little bump. But I think you will be impressed at the performance for a turboprop. It doesn't suck with TAS and GS in the flight levels and has no problem getting up to FL310 if you need it. Above that it get's pretty slushy. I never took it higher than FL320 personally.

I really don't feel it handles gusty cross winds very well at all in the approach to landing environment. If Beech could engineer a simple WOW cutoff for the Yaw damper so it can be kept on until touchdown the plane in my opinion would be much easier to handle as during really nasty surface wind conditions it can be a handful.

Essentially the 350i is the same King Air from all previous generations with new avionics. Antiquated pressurization control, no sinlge point service for the lav which baffles me. And no ground cooling without a running engine which we are not allowed to do at Gama until we are ready to pull off the ramp. Beechcraft is long overdue to make some basic modernizations to the airframe that will enhance safety, passenger and crew comfort. Its also starting to look like the i may be a maint hog but the jury is still out on that.

Overall I give it a C+ from a pilot's perspective but I know guys that would give it an A depending on what you have flown before.

To answer your last question I'm not really in the know on where we are getting applicants from. Though we certainly do pick up guys from Cape Air and Planesense I have no idea if it's a few or a lot.

Never flew a 350, but as a C-12 (B200) IP in the Navy, I always thought the King Air was the world's best personal airplane.

I sent my resume and cover letter today. Does anybody know how long to hear an answer?

Is there no electric / freon A/C that can be powered with a GPU?

How would you cool the cabin for passengers after the aircraft has been sat out on the ramp all afternoon on a summers day in Houston :eek:?

I never understood that. A KA 100 has an electric AC compressor instead of engine driven. Seems like step back as they made new models

How would you cool the cabin for passengers after the aircraft has been sat out on the ramp all afternoon on a summers day in Houston :eek:?[/QUOTE]

You don't. It gets hot, you start the engines then turn on the ECS. The airplane cools down very quickly once the a/c is on.

Speedy,

Check your PMs.

Thanks Packrat.

whats the sim. eval. looks like. what are they look for?
how long it takes. do they tell you if you pass or not same day?
and what expect after sim? Thanks

Heard from a couple sources today the WU exercised their second block of orders for another 35 KA-350i airplanes.