Turboprop question: what are the condition levers for?

[dinger]

What do the condition levers in turboprops do? In the check for the King Air, it says to put them in one position at the beginning of the flight and never mentions them again. Are you supposed to do that?

Thanks!

[soundair]

The Condition levers controle the pitch of the Prop blades for take off you would want the blades to take a big bight of air as you get up to crusing altitude you would adjust the pitch again to optimise your crusing speed. During descent you would feather the props to decrease lift and speed. i hope this answeres your Question. HappyTails
http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...0c1677a9b1.jpg

[Ace_Chaplan]

think of it as a gear shift. shift down for taking off climbing descents and landings. shift up for cruising.
gear shift as in a cars transmission, not your landing gear!
:-lol

[OStateFlyer]

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Apr-24-02 AT 02:16AM (EDT)[/font][p]Actually condition levers control fuel. The other replies are referring to the prop levers. The condition levers in the King Air have 3 positions, Cut-off, Low-Idle, and High-Idle. By moving the condition levers to Low-Idle, you set the engine to idle at a specific speed, moving them to High-Idle allows the engine to idle at a higher speed by introducing a greater constant fuel flow. Low-idle is used for starting and taxi; High-idle is used for normal flight and any time that that extra bleed air is required (such as for the air conditioning with only one engine running). Cut-off is just that, it cuts-off fuel to the engine. Hope that helps.

As for the prop levers...For takeoff you want a low blade angle so that you create maximum acceleration, for cruise you increase blade angle and reduce engine speed so that you are taking a bigger 'bite' of the airstream and getting a faster, more efficient cruise. For descent, you simply pull the power levers back and the airplane will drop as the blades go to a low blade angle while trying to achieve the RPM set by the prop levers creating a lot of drag. For landing, you go full forward on the prop levers so that maximum acceleration is once again available in the event of a go around.


Brad

http://www.okstate.edu/osu_orgs/flyingag/wings.gif