In all King Air models, power levers —the left one in particular, have a tendency to roll back to idle if the friction knob is not tightened. As per the “before takeoff checklist,” the friction knobs have to be set (tightened).
Note also that if any power lever comes back to a certain position, the autofeather system is disabled, this is to prevent a propeller to feather if the pilot willingly retards a power lever.
In this case, and if the power lever rolled back towards idle, the pilot needed to add power by bringing or pushing the power lever(s) forward.
And, “step on the heading bug” to keep directional control (assuming he did set the bug correctly for takeoff). Instead, he briefly applied force on the wrong rudder, that exacerbated the situation.
The NTSB docket states many pilot’s shortcomings:
The CVR recorded no calls by the pilot or copilot for any checklists, no takeoff briefing was made for any emergency contingency, no calls for V-speeds, etc.
According to testimonies retrieved by the NTSB, the pilot did not normally use checklists, but liked to just “jumped in the airplane and went.”
Etc.
Last edited by avionimc; 10th Aug 2020 at 11:32.