Cirrus First Impression
My father appears to have acquired an SR22 (not the DWI insurance, but rather one of those plastic airplanes) A fellow POA'er RV Tim put he and I in touch with a friend of his that has one and we got to bug him over the weekend.
He let us pick his brain and ask all of the questions we could think of and then he took us flying.
We are coming from a TB9 which is many steps below this plane in performance and technology.
1st It is hard not to love a plane when you are making a leap this big. If you drive a bug and you get a ride in a Vette, there will be a challenge in putting aside the awe that comes with it and focus on the challenges and solutions that the plane provides. I did my best to set aside the "Oh crap this is exciting" and be analytical. That said, I peed a little when he opened the hangar.
Let's get the chute out of the way. That seems to be the thing that comes up as far as separating the men pilots from the boy pilots when discussing this plane in your buddy's hangar. He explained how it works, gave us the parameters under which it is to be used and walked us around the plane explaining how it carries the aircraft. He explained that in a Mayday situation it should be used and emphasized that some pilots are hesitant to use it but explained that the insurance company wants you to use it. However unfeeling this sounds, it is cheaper for them to buy a qtr. million dollar plane then 4x that for everyone on board. I really expected a lot more chute talk but it was just discussed as another feature and he moved on.
Dad and I sit up front and the first thing we notice is how high you sit. Visibility is outstanding in this plane. You sit up very high in the plane (in the front seats) Even the shortest among us will be able to see out over the cowl with ease.
He explains the yoke which I find to be fascinating. There is no trim wheel but the yoke has elec. trim on it and markings along the um.. Pole part of the yoke that show you where the plane is trimmed.
I am surprised more planes don't have these markings on the yoke since it is the yoke that moves in and out when you trim and it is easier than looking down at the floor in most of the planes in which I have sat. It is a cool idea.
The yoke is spring loaded and my first impression is I don't like it. I am not sure what the benefit is except you don't need a control lock
but it has a significant amount of resistance to it. Something to get used to and probably means a lot of auto pilot usage on longer flights.
Everything is laid out very ergonomically. Coming from the TB, this was something I wondered about because Socata did such a great job of that. Cirrus seems to have put a lot of thought into letting the pilot work without doing a lot of reaching. Your hands rest naturally on the yoke and throttle and the things you adjust most frequently are closest to your fingertips.
This plane had 2 glass panels, Ours will only have the 1 avadyne on the right side and a six pack on the left. I think I will prefer the six pack version. In flight, he showed us "if ATC tells you to fly 220" then he went to the PFD, moved the cursor from alt to hdg, and changed it and hit enter. I believe I'd rather just change the heading bug on a steam gauge rather than dealing with "where's my cursor?" when using AP
That said, this was very slick. It had synthetic vision, and well just about everything you could imagine behind that glass.
One question I forgot to ask was how easy is it to see that glass when flying in high sun? My ipad for example is useless at times when it is bright. It may not be an issue but something I need to ask.
Other than that, it had 2 Garmin 430s and the rest was somewhat standard.
It has built in noise cancelling headphone jacks. so you don't have to have ANR headset to get the benefit of ANR. You do have to have the special bose connector to fit the jacks as they are not 1/4 inch mono jacks we have come to know and love.
Time to fly.
I hop in the back seat and Dad is in front. Dad is a big guy and right away I noticed I had as much legroom as I do in my Nissan Altima. It is a non issue for back seat pax. Very comfortable.
Looking out the window you sort of get a commercial jet feel with the tapered wing and fowler flaps. Reminds me of being a kid and looking "through" the wing of a jet on final.
Throttle up and the constant speed prop adjusts on its own (no blue knob) I am not sure if it is managed by computer or physics but you can feel it adjust at power up. Going from 160hp to 315hp was not difficult to detect. I am used to riding the wings up after rotation, This thing pulls you off the ground or so that was the feeling compared to the TB. Pattern altitude before turning crosswind was not something I had experienced before. This plane wants to climb.
Once up, it was severe turbulance (that's a joke) It was bumpy as hell and this weird part of me kind of expected this luxury vehicle to be a much smoother ride since it was so solid and quiet. But it turns out Cirrus is also subject to the same physics as Cessna. Who'd of thunk?
At this point I take my headset off, tap dad on the shoulder and have him do the same and we proceed to have a normal volume conversation and that was a trip. In our plane talking w/o headsets would not be doable. It is noticeably quiet in the plane.
We fly at 175 kts true and this is crazy fast to me. I loathe getting out from under the Class B around here and constantly monitoring that so I don't bust. It was a couple minutes and we were clear of it.
Again, I come from a 100 kt plane so we are really moving by comparison.
I really liked the traffic alerts. "Traffic Traffic" audibly got my VFR eyes out side the cockpit. You hear it, look where it is telling you to look and it seemed really accurate. I wouldn't consider this and FF to be mutually exclusive but when it showed the traffic, it was there. Sometimes "1 o'clock from ATC can be quite variable" no knock on ATC. I don't fly without them for the most part.
The autopilot is nice and did what you would expect.
I like the side stick. It hadn't occurred to me that non pilots in the right seat may want to fold their arms, legs, read a book, etc and not have a yoke in their personal space. The space the front seaters gain by not having a yoke there is noticeable.
Not sure what else.
All in all my opinion is the plane is super sweet and there is nothing to complain about. It is fast, solid, comfortable, and has bells and whistles beyond what anyone needs. And there becomes my only issue. I got the feeling while we were flying that for someone like me, my goal is to be flying in an airplane and I can do that for far less money. I really don't want a lot of glass and I personally would get the same level of satisfaction out of a plane 1/4 the price. Hell if I was single, I would have an ultralight. I just want to fly.
The plane does a lot but most of what it adds to flying are more wants versus needs (to a pilot like me).
DadPapaCharlie requires a lot of things I don't and he fell in love with it. He was like a kid at a candy store. It was really cool to watch him explore the plane. I am beyond thrilled to have access to such an amazing machine no doubt but When I see the price tag I just think what more is this doing for me than a plane far less expensive?
A lot of that has to do with me being in a tax bracket where this plane isn't even an option. I don't understand people buying ferrari's either but if you are not struggling to buy one, then it is not a big deal. Go get one.
Anyway, It is a very cool plane and just awesome to be in and watch it work. I am looking forward to flying in it with my dad and whomever else. I am not gonna lie though I thought about the chute quite a bit while we were flying and just knowing that was an option is pretty comforting when I think about my parents, wife, kids, being in a plane. I wish they were available in more planes. I suspect they will be one day.
I am still on a mission to aquire my own plane but certainly looking forward to flying in the lap of luxury until that time.
