Cover article for August 2014 King Air magazine

A MAGAZINE FOR THE OWNER/PILOT OF KING AIR AIRCRAFT

AUGUST 2014 • VOLUME 8, NUMBER 8 • $4.50

The Persistent Pilot Earning a Multi-engine Rating in a King Air 200

All In

A late-comer to flying, Rick Nutt now owns three airplanes and a hangar home

by MeLinda Schnyder

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F

or a guy who didn’t fully appreciate the value of general aviation until about a dozen years ago, 55-year-old Rick Nutt is making up for lost time: he now owns three airplanes – including a 1976 Beechcraft King Air 200; flies in aerobatic competitions and is building the ultimate hangar home at Stearman Field outside Wichita, Kan. Not one to take the path most followed, Nutt got over his tendency for airsickness by becoming an aerobatic pilot and later took his multi-engine instrument check ride in the King Air 200 he had purchased just nine months earlier. “I never said I was the smartest guy in the world or the best pilot, I’m just persistent,” he said.

Rick Nutt owns three aircraft – a 1976 King Air 200, 1944 Piper Cub and 2001 MX2. He and wife, Monica, are building a 9,500-square-foot hangar home at Stearman Field near Wichita, Kan.

Persistence in action At the age of 32, Nutt started a company that provides machined parts and complex aerospace assemblies along with producing items for nonaerospace industries (he still owns the company, which employs about 250 in Wichita). While aviation has always been a part of his life – he was born and raised in Wichita, his father owned several small airplanes and Nutt worked briefly at Boeing in his early 20s – it wasn’t until AUGUST 2014

his early 40s that Nutt discovered a personal interest in flying.

“My experience with my dad and his Cessna Cardinal was we never went anywhere,” Nutt said. “The farthest we went was to Dodge City (located in western Kansas). We’d fly out there and wouldn’t even land. We’d circle around and take some photos – my dad had a photography studio – and we’d come right back. That, to me, was general aviation because that’s all I was exposed to.”

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It didn’t help, either, that from a young age he was prone to getting airsick. He instead opted for airplanes of the radio-controlled variety, a hobby he started in the fifth grade and continues today.

In 2001, though, his priorities were changing.

After years devoted to youth sports, Nutt suddenly had more time on his hands as the youngest of his children entered high school.

He also wasn’t feeling challenged any longer by the precision and sport flying competitions of his RC aircraft hobby.

“The one thing that pushed me over the edge to start flying lessons was that I went on a ride with a guy named Tom Aldag in his dad’s RV-6,” Nutt said. “We were burning six gallons an hour doing about 170 mph.”

Nutt immediately saw the value of owning his own airplane: being able to get somewhere quickly and on his own schedule. “For years my wife, Monica, and I would leave the kids with the grandparents and drive to Dallas, Oklahoma, or Kansas City for a quick get-away from work,” Nutt said. “But with all the driving, it made for an exhausting weekend. I liked the idea of being able to get to the lake, to a Kansas City Chiefs game or to Texas whenever we wanted.”

His first flight lessons ended in airsickness, but when he found the right instructor and bought his first plane – a 1977 Mooney M20 J-model – it all came together.

“When I first started taking lessons, I got sick almost every time, but I got past it because I wanted to learn. Now, I have competed in several national aerobatics contests,” Nutt said.

From sick bags to flying a loop “When I bought my first airplane, I’d done my research. I knew I wanted a J-model and something between 1977 and 1981. I knew I didn’t want turbocharged, I wanted a nice, simple airplane that would do the job,” Nutt said. “The Mooney I bought had a Garmin 430 in it, which was the first of the nice, color GPSs with a moving map. It was way ahead of me. I hardly had any flying time at that point, but I could see that I could fit in it, it was going to be as fast as that RV-6 I’d flown and it would carry four people and go a long ways.

“After about 40 hours of flying it, they signed me off so I could fly solo. By 60 hours, I was making cross-countries. I took my check ride at 125 hours. The reason I waited so long was that insurance had told me they weren’t going to let me carry any passengers until then because I didn’t have much experience and I was flying a retractable, complex airplane.”

A few years after getting his private pilot’s license in 2003, Nutt was still bothered that he used to get sick when the instructor in his early flying lessons went into spins. He found a local pilot who gave lessons in a high-wing, aerobatic trainer. “I wanted to get on top of it

Nutt tows his King Air 200 out of his new hangar, which houses several other prized possessions: a 1950 Indian Chief motorcycle, 1948 Ford convertible, 1936 Ford coupe and a ski boat.

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Overview of Stearman Field with Nutt’s King Air 200 and Piper Cub on the ground in front of his hangar (left), which is in the final stages of construction.

so that it wasn’t scary to me. I wanted to be a better pilot,” he said. “He taught me upset recovery, spins, stalls, that kind of stuff. I kept after it to the point that I got hooked.”

That led to a second aircraft, a 1984 Pitts Special S2B that Nutt flew in the sportsman category at aerobatic contests until he replaced it in 2011 with the MX2.

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“My MX2 is the very first prototype built from a Giles 202 kit, the one that showed up at Oshkosh in 2001 with a question mark on its tail,” Nutt said. “The very first airplane after this one they called the MX2 on the type certificate. Mine is registered as a Giles 202, but it doesn’t have a Giles wing or tail; it barely has anything that’s Giles. The canopies are the same on both airplanes.

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Nutt jumped from a Mooney to a King Air 200, earning his multiengine rating with the help of intensive scenario-based training with a production test pilot at Beechcraft Corp.

“I bought it and flew it, and it had some prototype issues,” he said. “It didn’t feed fuel out of the tanks very well; the fuel vent was screwed up. I’ve got an A&P mechanic and an engineer who hang out with me and we went through and pulled all the systems out, and completely replumbed all the fuel. The fuel valve was way up where I couldn’t reach it when I was sitting in there with my seatbelts on, so we moved it back to where I could get to it. We put radios in, a Garmin G3X, and spent like 400 hours working on it.”

For awhile, Nutt was flying in aerobatic contests every two or three weeks but since buying the King Air, he’s devoted most of his time to multi-engine flying and building the new hangar. He plans to get back to contests as soon as his schedule allows.

“I wasn’t great at it but I kept trying and I got better and better because I was persistent,” Nutt said. “Some guys are just naturally really good at things, like playing the guitar. I don’t have any skills like that. I’m just persistent. That’s probably why my business does well: I just don’t quit. I’m not dangerous. I’m not careless.

I like lots of training, so I’ve got mentors I train with. There are two guys on the field here who are better pilots than me that I’ll fly with if I’m wanting to learn something new. They’ll 6 • ­KING AIR MAGAZINE

run me through things until I understand the dynamics of it.”

Moving up to the King Air Nutt flew his 1977 Mooney M20 J-model about 800 hours. He then owned a 2006 Mooney Ovation 2 followed by a 2008 Mooney Ovation 3, the airplane in which he got his instrument rating and by then had accumulated 1,600 hours. He flew the airplanes throughout the United States and increasingly felt limited.

“I decided I wanted to start looking at twins a couple of years before I actually ended up with one,” Nutt said. “I was finding myself completely packing the Mooney to the gills, being right at max gross weight, not being able to take as much fuel as I wanted, and my passengers were jammed in. I needed something more capable.”

Nutt first looked at Cessna 421 models but decided he wanted something faster, and he liked what he heard about the King Air’s ability to fly on one engine.

“The turbine engines, the reliability, the huge cabin: the King Air 200 is an incredible airplane,” Nutt said.

In November 2012, he bought a 1976 King Air 200. The aircraft was ready for Nutt: AUGUST 2014

In May 2011, it had undergone a $400,000 Garmin G1000 conversion and a year before that it had an interior makeover and a unique cream and brown paint job.

Nutt, on the other hand, wasn’t quite ready for the King Air. He had some hours in a twinengine Piper, but he knew it hadn’t prepared him for the King Air 200. “I like to do things slowly. I’ve got a lot to lose,” he said. “The King Air was way faster, it was way more complicated, and I had all kinds of new systems to learn.”

Serendipitously, a production test pilot at Beechcraft Corp. in Wichita, who was the son of Stearman Field’s owners, had recently been laid off. Alex Clemens was available to meet Nutt’s training needs.

“Alex was so helpful, and it was perfect timing for both of us. It’s amazing to find someone that young with that much experience,” Nutt said.

“Insurance told me I was going to have to fly 150 or so hours before my check ride for my

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multi-engine rating. I hired Alex and for almost a year we flew everywhere together.”

The pair averaged about four hours a week locally and Clemens also accompanied Nutt on trips with his family and friends to Florida, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, Cayman Islands and the Bahamas.

“It’s a big jump from a Mooney to a King Air 200, and I knew it was possible, but I wasn’t sure how smooth it would go,” Clemens said.

“It went really well. We did a lot of training and took it really slow. Rick’s aerobatic and tail-wheel experience helped a lot.”

The real-world training propelled Nutt to his multi-engine rating in September 2013.

“Rick was ready for his check ride and to go on his own a long time before we were done. It was a matter of making sure he was comfortable carrying his passengers,” Clemens said. “Learning new personal minimums is a big thing we worked on because in a Mooney you just wouldn’t go and in a King Air you can go.”

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Nutt said more complex arrivals from air traffic control and getting used to landing the King Air were his biggest challenges. And although Clemens was rehired by Beechcraft soon after Nutt earned his rating, the two get together routinely for refreshers. Nutt said he’s also an avid reader of King Air expert Tom Clements’ book and his King Air magazine column.

Up next for the King Air Now that Nutt has settled into owning and flying his King Air 200, he said his typical trip is “one hour with wing tanks full, luggage and six to eight people.”

During football season he regularly loads 10 people for a 35-minute flight to downtown Kansas City, where a shuttle waits to take them to the Chiefs game. Summertime finds him taking family and friends to the Ozarks in Missouri. His longest trips have been Wichita to Kissimmee, Fla., to the Bahamas and Wichita to Key West, Fla., to the Cayman Islands.

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Nutt flying his 1977 King Air 200 over Stearman Field, with a view of his new 9,500-square-foot hangar home. When he purchased the aircraft in late 2012, it already had its unique cream and brown paint scheme.

“I’ve got a -41 airplane with -42 fans and it performs really, really good,” Nutt said. “I love that I can get six friends and all the fuel I want to take and make Florida easily.”

Besides routine maintenance, he’s done very little with the King Air since he bought it. A Wichita supplier provided him with new lights.

“Robi Lorik at PWI, Inc. was working on an STC for an LED lighting system for the King Airs and asked if he could install them on my plane,” Nutt said. “They are really nice. It gets rid of all the wiring with modern LED and they don’t draw any load. You could leave them on all the time and you wouldn’t run your battery down, it’s just incredible. They light more evenly, and it’s cooler. The old bulbs were fluorescent and super expensive to replace. Over time, the LEDs pay for themselves because you don’t have to do any maintenance on them.”

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He also said an engine over­ haul and interior work are in the near future.

“I got a chance to fly in a King Air 300 last week and it was like taking my airplane and putting hemis on it,” Nutt said.

“I mean it was a hot rod. I was like, ‘How can I afford one of those?’ Blackhawk makes those engine conversions that would make my 200 a lot like a 300.

It’s something to think about.”

With the purchase of the King Air, Nutt needed a place to hangar the aircraft along with his 1944 Piper Cub and the experimental 2001 MX2. He chose Lloyd Stearman Airport Field, nine miles northeast of Wichita in Benton because he has friends there, he likes the energy of the community and because he’s allowed to work on his experimental airplane.

Nutt’s lot is one of 40 sold for condominium-hangars at the airport, which is named for the 11 vintage Stearman biplanes that are among 150 aircraft that call the airport home. Although it’s months from completion, the 9,500-square-foot structure has already made a difference in the skyline, partly because it’s next door to the Stearman Field Bar & Grill (a gathering spot for resident s and visitors) and partly because of its opulence.

“The drawings didn’t look that flashy. I just started thinking, it’d be nice to have a little walkway here and it’d be nice to have a tower here,” Nutt said. “I built a hangar, made it a little bit taller and I put an extra floor in for that little patio up above the runway. It’s going to be exceptional.” KA

After overcoming a tendency to get airsick, Nutt has owned several aerobatic aircraft including this one he stands by, a 2001 MX2 – the very first prototype built from a Giles 202 kit.

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