Some Cirrius Cirrus fun
OK, I hope you can excuse the mighty lame play on words in the title, but I thought I'd write a little about how I spent this afternoon.
I was in a 10AM meeting going over VIBE 4 software bugs in order to decide which must be fixed before we can make our impending "gold" release in the next few weeks. Suddenly my phone lets out a ring and I see that my instructor Charles is calling. I step out of the meeting for a second to chat. He tells me that they have a Cirrus SR-22 G2 over at PHF and asks if I'd like to come check it out. Not one to pass up that kind of offer I say "sure thing!" and ask my boss, Maciek, if he can join me. He agrees and an hour later we are at the airport talking with Charles.
Another instructor, Bill, was showing the plane to someone else, so after we waited our turn it was time for Maciek, his wife Heather, and their daughter Sarah to go for a ride with Charles. They flew for about an hour while Krista, me, and Bill talked about the planes on the ramp and what its like to work in software development.
When it was time for K and me to go she hopped in the back and I hopped in the left front seat. Maciek seemed to have a really good time on his ride so at ths point, with the glass panel in front of me for the first time, I was really looking forward to going. I tossed Krista my craptacular camera phone so that she could snap some photos. They came out quite crummy so that’s why the pictures below show so little detail.
Charles walked me through the start up which was nothing too unusual. We didn't prime it much since it had just been flown - the engine started up quite quickly. We fired up the glass panel and I watched the screens come to life. I've had a big interest in the glass panel of the Cirrus since I first saw a magazine picture a while ago and this was the first time I got to see the PFD in person. It was just as I knew it would be - from using simulated SR-22s in Microsoft Flight Sim and viewing dozens of pictures on the 'net. Things that I couldn't get a opinion of until I saw it in person was the screen brightness (quite good, easily readable even with sunglasses on) and the screen refresh rate. With the refresh rate I imagined it would be like my Garmin handheld - fast but not super fast. I was wrong - it was very fast with a near real-time response rate. After I saw it in action I realized it had to be that way - since it is acting as the artificial horizon you really need fast feedback from it.
After a check of the ATIS and a call to Ground we were starting our taxi out to runway 20. We even had A/C running to keep us cool - a nice feature in the summer since you can't open the windows.
It took me a couple hundred feet of taxiing to get used to the lack of nose wheel steering. The nose wheel in on a caster - not too unlike like a shopping cart wheel though a few thousand bucks more expensive. This means you need to use the differential braking to turn. That I had no problem with, but what tripped me up was that if you are turning right the airplane will continue to turn right even after you let go of the right brake. I guess it is because the nose wheel is pointing to the right and so you keep going that direction. You have to tap a little opposite brake to straighten it back out. Once we were on the main taxiway I found it pretty easy to keep on/near centerline.
Charles brought up the CMax feature on the MFD (multi-function display). This gave a top-down view of the airport diagram, complete with taxiway names and an icon showing the position of the airplane – very, very cool.
At the run-up area Charles showed me how to test the alternators and the prop governor as we walked through the electronic checklist on the MFD. Everything checked out stunningly - even the magneto check barely showed any RPM drop. The tower cleared us to position and hold on 20 so we did just that.
A few moments later (once a traffic chopper cleared the area above us) we got the go-ahead to takeoff. I slowly brought in the power and noticed how the RPMs dropped momentarily as the prop pitch was automatically adjusted for us. 70 knots came quickly, though not overwhelming so, and I eased some back pressure on the side stick to lift us off. We saw a nice rate of climb rate (maybe 1000 ft/sec) off the pavement even with three of us in the plane and an air temperature of about 80F.
Charles punched on the autopilot fairly quickly so that we could take a look at the MFD on climb-out. He showed the XM weather pulling in METARs, the graphical TFRs (one of which was at Langley as they get ready for tomorrow’s big-time air show), and all the engine management goodies. I tried not to drool too much on the Bose microphone in front of my face.
As we leveled at 2500 ft Charles pointed out our true airspeed of ~160kts. You have to go higher (maybe 9000-10,000) to get the ~180 kt cruise it is advertised with. I looked down and saw the ground moving past faster than I ever have from a cockpit viewpoint.
After a bit I disconnected the autopilot and made a few steep turns and did a little slow flight. The slow flight felt almost identical to normal speed flight - the controls were still totally responsive and even the airplane attitude was similar to what it was around 160kts. I had very little trouble keeping on altitude probably because the autopilot had already trimmed the airplane dead-on for me.
All too soon we pointed the nose back to PHF and entered a right-hand pattern for 20. Charles talked me through the landing and it went surprisingly well especially considering we had a direct crosswind of about 8 knots. The touchdown was smooth and solid – the airplane made me look much better than I deserved.
We taxied back and did the shutdown procedure. After I stopped gushing praise on the airplane to Charles we were on our way home in the car. All the traffic we had to dodge on the interstate made Cirrus travel look all the sweeter.
My thoughts on the Cirrus:
I was in a 10AM meeting going over VIBE 4 software bugs in order to decide which must be fixed before we can make our impending "gold" release in the next few weeks. Suddenly my phone lets out a ring and I see that my instructor Charles is calling. I step out of the meeting for a second to chat. He tells me that they have a Cirrus SR-22 G2 over at PHF and asks if I'd like to come check it out. Not one to pass up that kind of offer I say "sure thing!" and ask my boss, Maciek, if he can join me. He agrees and an hour later we are at the airport talking with Charles.
Another instructor, Bill, was showing the plane to someone else, so after we waited our turn it was time for Maciek, his wife Heather, and their daughter Sarah to go for a ride with Charles. They flew for about an hour while Krista, me, and Bill talked about the planes on the ramp and what its like to work in software development.
When it was time for K and me to go she hopped in the back and I hopped in the left front seat. Maciek seemed to have a really good time on his ride so at ths point, with the glass panel in front of me for the first time, I was really looking forward to going. I tossed Krista my craptacular camera phone so that she could snap some photos. They came out quite crummy so that’s why the pictures below show so little detail.
Charles walked me through the start up which was nothing too unusual. We didn't prime it much since it had just been flown - the engine started up quite quickly. We fired up the glass panel and I watched the screens come to life. I've had a big interest in the glass panel of the Cirrus since I first saw a magazine picture a while ago and this was the first time I got to see the PFD in person. It was just as I knew it would be - from using simulated SR-22s in Microsoft Flight Sim and viewing dozens of pictures on the 'net. Things that I couldn't get a opinion of until I saw it in person was the screen brightness (quite good, easily readable even with sunglasses on) and the screen refresh rate. With the refresh rate I imagined it would be like my Garmin handheld - fast but not super fast. I was wrong - it was very fast with a near real-time response rate. After I saw it in action I realized it had to be that way - since it is acting as the artificial horizon you really need fast feedback from it.
After a check of the ATIS and a call to Ground we were starting our taxi out to runway 20. We even had A/C running to keep us cool - a nice feature in the summer since you can't open the windows.
It took me a couple hundred feet of taxiing to get used to the lack of nose wheel steering. The nose wheel in on a caster - not too unlike like a shopping cart wheel though a few thousand bucks more expensive. This means you need to use the differential braking to turn. That I had no problem with, but what tripped me up was that if you are turning right the airplane will continue to turn right even after you let go of the right brake. I guess it is because the nose wheel is pointing to the right and so you keep going that direction. You have to tap a little opposite brake to straighten it back out. Once we were on the main taxiway I found it pretty easy to keep on/near centerline.
Charles brought up the CMax feature on the MFD (multi-function display). This gave a top-down view of the airport diagram, complete with taxiway names and an icon showing the position of the airplane – very, very cool.
At the run-up area Charles showed me how to test the alternators and the prop governor as we walked through the electronic checklist on the MFD. Everything checked out stunningly - even the magneto check barely showed any RPM drop. The tower cleared us to position and hold on 20 so we did just that.
A few moments later (once a traffic chopper cleared the area above us) we got the go-ahead to takeoff. I slowly brought in the power and noticed how the RPMs dropped momentarily as the prop pitch was automatically adjusted for us. 70 knots came quickly, though not overwhelming so, and I eased some back pressure on the side stick to lift us off. We saw a nice rate of climb rate (maybe 1000 ft/sec) off the pavement even with three of us in the plane and an air temperature of about 80F.
Charles punched on the autopilot fairly quickly so that we could take a look at the MFD on climb-out. He showed the XM weather pulling in METARs, the graphical TFRs (one of which was at Langley as they get ready for tomorrow’s big-time air show), and all the engine management goodies. I tried not to drool too much on the Bose microphone in front of my face.
As we leveled at 2500 ft Charles pointed out our true airspeed of ~160kts. You have to go higher (maybe 9000-10,000) to get the ~180 kt cruise it is advertised with. I looked down and saw the ground moving past faster than I ever have from a cockpit viewpoint.
After a bit I disconnected the autopilot and made a few steep turns and did a little slow flight. The slow flight felt almost identical to normal speed flight - the controls were still totally responsive and even the airplane attitude was similar to what it was around 160kts. I had very little trouble keeping on altitude probably because the autopilot had already trimmed the airplane dead-on for me.
All too soon we pointed the nose back to PHF and entered a right-hand pattern for 20. Charles talked me through the landing and it went surprisingly well especially considering we had a direct crosswind of about 8 knots. The touchdown was smooth and solid – the airplane made me look much better than I deserved.
We taxied back and did the shutdown procedure. After I stopped gushing praise on the airplane to Charles we were on our way home in the car. All the traffic we had to dodge on the interstate made Cirrus travel look all the sweeter.
My thoughts on the Cirrus:
- The side-stick took zero time to become natural - I have flown an SR-22 from the right seat before so that might have helped.
- The PFD was great. I took to it faster than I expected (but I AM a software geek). The tape readout was not much trouble to get used to but I didn't experience it enough to form a strong opinion
- the on-board information (wx, TFRs, frequencies) was flat-out amazing
- the performance was excellent - she flew smooth and fast - what more could I ask for
- landing it was easy, though I had some really good coaching from the right seat helping
- it doesn't like to slow down - we pulled back the power about 10 miles out in order to give it time to get down to 120-130 kts
- the lack of a nosewheel was no big deal, though I'd rather not have to use the brakes so much when taxiing
- I really liked the seat belts in 103MK - it was the best 4-point harness I've seen - I forgot it was there right after putting it on. The newer ones even have airbags
- I gotta get me some of that
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