The other poster is probably referring to ice vanes.
Henning was referring to waste gates, not ice vanes.
Turbine engines are dirt simple compared to piston operation. It's hard to hurt a turbine. The same cannot be said of a piston.
It is very easy to hurt a PT-6, especially when you are rigging it. They don't like to be started over and over again in a short period. One should, if possible, wait 30 minutes after shutdown for a restart. Rigging requires multiple restarts.
The PT6 is quite possibly the easiest turbine to operate; it's a very simple powerplant to use, and to understand. Don't overtemp or overtorque it, and there's not much you can do to hurt it
You don't have to do anything to "hurt" a PT-6. They can do enough damage all on their own. I flew a 200 that was being sold. It had less than 100 hrs from a P&W overhaul. One of the nozzles was spraying a stream of fuel against the combustion liner. It cost $250,000 to repair. lesson: If you are buying a KA, open the engines.
There's a lot you can do to hurt a piston engine.
You clearly speak from experience here.
If the airplanes are properly trimmed out and set up, the power levers will be very close. Have you flown the vast majority of King Airs, in that you know from experience that your statement is correct? Perhaps you've just flown a lot of poorly maintained equipment.
The equipment I flew was maintained by large "Beech" shops, Flightcraft and Western Aircraft Services, and paid for owners who always paid the bill. A brand new airplane with consecutively numbered engines can be rigged pretty good. Once the airplane has been in service for a few years it becomes more difficult because the engines become mismatched. One engine might need a hot section due to FOD or just not making target power or something. Rental engine might be installed. When you go to an overhaul facility you find that there are different spec CT blades available for the same engine. These things add up over time and usually an airplane will have engines that no longer match like they did when new.
With one notable exception, the King Air's I've flown are generally matched very closely. In fact, mismatched power levers are usually a good indication of something else amiss. If the airplane isn't properly rigged, however, there's one more warning or clue you won't get.
You are lucky, maybe flown some new equipment, but as KAs age they become more and more difficult to match rigging. And it is no 2 hour job, as Henning suggests. Sure, you can slam a rental engine on in a few hours with a couple of guys. And then you can spend the next two days rigging, if you like perfection. And even then, they are likely to just be close in one direction.
I don't think I've ever seen a "four foot lick of flame coming out the stack" in any king air,
Proof you've never looked out of a 200 at night. 10% of the thrust of a PT6 is jet exhaust at cruise. A beautiful blue/yellow flame is quite definitely flowing from those stacks.
ever, or any PT-6 powered airplane, for that matter. You must really be flying some very poorly maintained equipment.
It is your eyesight that is "poor." BTW, I highly recommend Lazik.
On a King Air, it's really not that hard to do, but I wouldn't extend that notion to all piston aircraft, or all turbine aircraft, either. I've flown a lot of different four engine airplanes, piston, turboprop, and turbojet, which don't have any of the four levers matched, though the flight previous they can be, and the one after, they can be. The positioning and the matching varies with the power lever position, temperature, and other factors; the levers tend to be more matched at high or low power ranges, generally, but not both. The equality of wear and condition on each engine plays a big part; how much wear is going on in the fuel control, and how dirty is each compressor? Are both similar time engines? One may have similar idle power, but not at the top end, or visa versa.
King Airs generally don't fly enough to have an excuse for gross mismatching.
I don't know where you are coming from, but our airplanes worked for a living. If we didn't get 45 hours a month the airplanes would go away.
If the power levers aren't easily within less than a knob's difference, they should be reset and retrimmed. Most every King Air i've ever flown has had matched (or fairly closely matched) power lever positions. The same is true of most turboprops I've flown.
The King Air fleet is very old. Most are running with their third or fourth engine overhauls. The engines are not matched and neither should one expect their power levers to be. Many (most) of the time they can be made to be pretty good forward, but then worsen into beta.
Any time there's an unusual power lever position, one should begin looking for the cause.
Don't spend the bosses money on a witch hunt. It sounds like you flew for a government agency in which case money was wantonly wasted on frivolity.
All easily addressed, all easily fixed.
