Page 9 - Volume 17 Number 11

without much braking and taxi to the FBO, staying on the tower frequency.We are now well more than 12 hours into the trip, but only 456 nm from home. We get refueling started, then call home to find the weather at KBLI is deteriorating with heavy rain showers, caused by a cold front moving into the area. The company encourages us to get moving before things get worse. It is past supper time, and we were looking forward to ordering a hamburger from the nearby Burger King, but now we just buy some stale peanuts and cheese crackers from the vending machine and hurry back to the King Air, trying not to spill our styrofoam cups of warm, but very old, coffee.The last leg is mine, and as we climb out the sun disappears into some clouds over the Rocky Mountains to our West. Shortly thereafter, we encounter rain, then snow and a moderate chop. I decide to hand fly the airplane just for the IMC practice and level out at FL 280, still in clouds with some ice forming. We open the engine ice vanes on the PT6s and notice the expected power drop. It is hard to hand fly, drink coffee and eat old crumbling crackers at the same time, so I turn on the autopilot and leave it on until our initial descent point on the MADEE TWO arrival into KBLI.Sure enough, as we descend over the west side of the Cascade Mountains, there are some pretty decent returns all over Puget Sound on the radar, with a nasty one on the north side of KBLI, just where we need to go in order to begin the ILS to runway 16. However, at 4,000 feet, while being vectored by Victoria Approach on a right downwind for the ILS, we see the lights of KBLI’s runway 16, just a mile or two off to our right.We fly less than another minute north and the windshield suddenly gets obscured by a blast of rain so noisy it makes even headsetKING AIR LANDING GEAR• Complete Sets• Individual Components• Removal and Installation601.936.3599 www.traceaviation.comFAA CRS R39R997XYour Source for King Air Landing GearNOVEMBER 2013TWIN & TURBINE • 7