Trip report: Cirrus SR-22 demo flight

Last year at SnF I stopped by the Cirrus booth and indicated interest in the Cirrus, leading to an offer of a demo flight. Scheduling problems prevented this from actually happening for over a year, but today the wait paid off.

A cold front had come through yesterday, bringing rain, mist, low clouds, and such, but the sun rose today over a pristine and cloudless sky. Pretty soon some puffies started forming, but a weather briefing indicated that they would be up around four to five thousand feet, with a higher layer at about eight. Clear above. With light breezes and a nice fall day ahead, I headed off to Danbury to meet Mark Bennett, who would take me on the demo.

We were to meet at one pm. I got there a bit early, and he had gone to have lunch, so I did a little bit of a walkaround (or more of a gawkaround, since it wasn't my airplane). It has a castering nosewheel, and a three bladed prop with what appeared to be a glycol dispenser near the hub for each blade. The prop had what looked like de-ice boots on the inner part, but I later found that they are just channels for the de-ice fluid to follow. I suppose they could have been carved into the prop just as easily, but it probably would have been harder to do it that way. Wings and fuselage are composite, but the control surfaces are metal. Fit and finish is quite impressive. The wing and horizontal stablizer leading edges appeared to be smooth aluminum with a mesh of teeny holes. De-ice again, which is a good thing to have in the Northeast - if you are going to get a high performance airplane to go places and end up grounded for half the winter, why bother!

There is a discontinuity by the leading edge of the wing, about halfway out. I later found that this is so that the outer part could have a different angle of attack, and therefore stall last. I was surprised that they did it this way rather than with a smoothly varying curve, which composite construction ought to allow. Near the tail is a placard saying something like "Warning - rocket parachute - stay clear when aircraft is occupied." Puzzling that it's all the way in the back. It turns out that that's where the BRS is kept, and when deployed, the fuselage unzips so that the shroud lines, some of which are connected to the nose, can deploy properly. I bet the rocket hurts too if you're too close.

The baggage compartment opens with a key. It appears you can't leave it "unlocked". There is no yoke - it is a side stick. Instead of the usual instruments, there are two TV screens big enough to show the game between the Yankees and the Knicks, but since I'm not a football fan, I think I'd opt to have them show flight information. The cockpit is quite wide, with dark brown leather upholstry, a reasonable imitation of a five point restraint system, and (just a minute, I have to wipe this drool off the airplane).
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/cfrom_P9200003.JPG (35K)
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/from_P9200003.JPG (282K)

Here he comes. I've brought my flight bag and headset; he says that it won't be needed. I bring it anyway - I'm still from the old school (but I know what he means). We do a regular preflight; I do mine in three stages - first is electrical. On with the master, down with the flaps, and all the lights work. There is no tail light - just the wing lights and strobes. And a landing light, of course. There is an electrical stall warning, but I can't find it. He lets me keep looking, and eventually he points it out - a 1/8 inch hole in the leading edge of the wing, which is impractical to test, although some people blow into it. He claimed it worked on his landing at Danbury, and that's good enough for me. At least for this flight.

Next, fluids. Oil is good, but the first drain of gas shows lots of what appear to be little white fibers. I drain a few more times and eventually get clean samples. The gas tanks (in the wings) are made of composite, presumably the same stuff the wings are made of, and I bet this is somehow coming from the inside of the tank. There are two drains for each wing, and one gascolator sump. We also check the de-ice fluid. It's a bit hard to see in the de-ice tank because of the sun, but it appears to be empty, so we'll stay out of the ice. Not too difficult, as it's a beautiful fall day. The next part of the preflight is the mechanical stuff. Somewhere during my preflight I climb up onto the wing to get something in the cabin, and (as I often do in the cherokees I fly) knelt down on part of the seat cushion. Bang! Ouch!

Every airplane has teeth, and I just found the jaws of the Cirrus. There is a lip where the wing joins the fuselage at the door, and this particular one is much higher than the Cherokee's, probably to store the BRS shroud lines. My shin will remember this for a long time! Anyway, as I continue the preflight, the Cirrus takes another nip at me. Under the wing where the flaps attach, there is a long thin fairing which descends well below the wing, just waiting for the skull of an errant pilot. That's another mistake I won't make again!

Suitably satisfied that the airplane will fly, we climb in, and the first thing Mark mentions is that, unlike most little airplane doors, these gull doors should be slammed shut. He demonstrates on his. Whumph! Ok, I can do that. Whumph!

Don't do =that= in a Cherokee!

We start the engine; the procedure is similar to any other fuel injected engine. The power lever (and the mixture control) are located between the pilot and copilot, and very much resemble a gear shift lever in a car. It's actually a very natural position for those controls. The plane comes with Bose headsets; they are impressive - quiet and comfortable. I can see why people rave about them. The airplane itself is quite noisy without them, but it's a smooth noise, and the engine is smooth. Once the fan is turning, Mark goes over the glass cockpit with me. There is a wealth of information on those two screens, and there are many buttons along the side that make navigation easy. The screens are huge. I mean HUGE.
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/cfrom_P9200004.JPG (37K)
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/from_P9200004.JPG (290K)
I used to work on a Mac, the original Mac, the one that can be converted into fish tanks. These are the one piece ones with the (must be) six inch black and white screens. You get used to anything, and I was used to that, but I needed to do some laser printing (back in the days when it was exotic) and went to an outside service to do this. They had a twenty inch screen, and after using it, coming back to "my" Mac felt like using a toy computer. Well, these are big screens. But, it will take some getting used to. I've never flown glass before, and the information is not always where I expect it, nor is it differentiated visually the way I'm used to seeing. A tape is a tape. Of course, a dial is a dial, but I think there are more differences between dials than between tapes.

On the other screen is the moving map, or the approach plates, or the engine monitor, or the checklist, or the terrain indicator, or the weather map (there wasn't any weather to see today), or any number of other things. I didn't ask about the ball game.

Taxiing out it's important to watch the wings, which are slender and longer than the Cherokees I'm used to. In the runup area we go throught the (built in) checklist, flipping back and forth between it and the engine monitor screen, and are soon ready to take off. Our objective was to "go somewhere" to get the feeling of travelling in this airplane, do some airwork, do some instrument approaches, and do some landings, so we picked Groton as our destination. Ready to go, I line us up on runway 26, and smoothly apply power. Somewhere around seventy or eighty knots, slight backpressure on the stick and we've left the confines of the earth, heading skyward. Lower the nose a bit to climb at a higher airspeed, up with the flaps (the Cirrus takes off with half flaps), and we're crossing pattern altitude before we know it. Left downwind departure, and the five thousand foot layer of beautiful puffy clouds is arrayed before us. Where we're going is a nice hole, and we watch th
e clouds slide by us as we climb up to almost two miles. The airplane handles very smoothly and I am especially impressed by the visibility, although it's a little limited in the direction of bank. Probably no more so than in the Cherokee though.

It's smooth up at this altitude, with the broken cumulus below us. I don't usually climb this high, but once settled in, we reach a ground speed of over 200 knots. There's a little help from the wind, but the plane is doing about 180 knots true. There's no propeller pitch lever; all engine operations are done by percent power, and the computer figures everything out. Leaning is easy too - set up the lean finder and watch the bars on the engine monitor as you slowly pull back the mixture. You'll see each individual cylinder reach its peak and turn blue, and when the last one peaks, richen the mixture 65 degrees. The computer even tells you when you have best power, best economy, or the best tacos west of the east. For a first time glass pilot this takes some eyeball time, but Mark tells me it becomes second nature.

The clouds drop away and Block Island, Long Island, and the Connecticut shore all present themselves to me in the High Resolution Wraparound Plexiglass Display (HRWPD, which is the same kind of display used in all the other small aircraft I've flown). Somehow, it just looks better today. Maybe it's the gorgeous clear day, maybe it's the higher altitude, maybe it's the thought that I'm having more fun flying this Cirrus, or for that matter, just flying, than most of the people in the world will ever have.

The controls have a different feel to them. On most aircraft I've flown, the feedback is from the aerodynamic forces on the control surfaces. On this aircraft, it is from internal springs or bungees that center the control stick, much like a standard game joystick. You trim the forces away, but I think that moves some gizmo that moves the springs. It's not like the aerodynamic feedback I'm used to.

On the right hand screen we pick up the METARs and TAFs for our destination, call approach to negotiate a practice ILS, and start down. I do some slow flight on the way down, pulling the power back and putting in the flaps. First notch (well, it's an electric switch that has two settings - half and full - they aren't called notches) comes in at 120 knots, and full flaps when we're slowed down to something like ninety. Keep pulling the power back and trimming. The Cirrus uses electric trim - there's a thumb control on the sidestick. It has aleron and elevator trim, but no rudder trim. There's no manual backup, and the electric trim is quite sensitive. Normally I prefer manual trim, but I find the electric trim to be quite nice. I get the aircraft down to something around sixty knots, and the nose starts bobbing quite a bit. Stall, droop, stall, droop. We do this for a little while, and then I try again, this time controlling the pitch more actively. I can reduce th
e oscillations, but now it doesn't want to fly straight - I need to control the roll axis too. Perhaps I'm going slower now, but this isn't really a test pilot flight and I'm not recording the data. Add power, pull back the flaps, and set up for the approach. I do notice that the control forces do not get lighter and sloppier the same way that they would in the Cherokee. It's that bungee thing again, no doubt.

My charts are in the back, but no matter, they are all in the computer. Click, click, and the approach plate is up on the right hand screen, along with a little airplane showing where I am on the plate, and the course lines. The approach is also shown on the moving map, including the holds and waypoints. There are several views of the chart, and soon one of the disadvantages (to me) of the glass cockpit becomes apparant. I wear bifocals, sort of. That is, I need them but I wear glasses that have one lens set for distant vision, and the other is a bifocal set for distant and middle vision. The split in that lens is unusually low, as it's there only so I can see my charts on my lap. Well, these charts are not on my lap - they are right in front of me! So, I'll need to re-think my spectacle situation, lest I become a spectacle myself. I can see the screens well enough however, and I go to don my hood.

"Your airplane". I pull the hood out of my case. Well, actually Mike gets my case (since the back seat is too far back for me to reach - did I say this was a =big= four place?) and I put it on. Mike is amused - it is a cardboard replica of an old Jepp (branded) folding plastic hood that I absolutely love, but which was stolen many years ago. It fit better than any hood I've ever used, it folds, and this new version is cheap. Nothing like flying a half-million dollar airplane with a hand made cardboard hood on my head!

We're given vectors and cleared for the approach, and I start out well enough. Headings and altitudes are put into the computer quite easily (it's something one has to learn to remember to do), though it will take a little getting used to. The first few times I screw it up, and the next few times I forget. These bugs serve as reminders, they also program the computer (and the autopilot, if you care to use it).

I am not used to flying a tape, and the glide slope indicator is WAY inconspicuous. The aircraft has a HSI (or a synthetic HSI displayed on the screen), which is a terrific instrument for situational awareness, but since the needle tilts, it takes some getting used to. I've flown HSIs before, but not often. More to the point however, the glide slope needle doesn't exist - like most HSIs it is just a dot next to a scale. Unlike most HSIs however, it is located diagonally somewhere else on the screen. I much prefer the horizontal and vertical needles from the old ILS CDI heads. Much much much much! The other stuff is just a question of getting used to it.
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/cfrom_P9200006.JPG (32K)
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/from_P9200006.JPG (284K)
(alas, this pic doesn't show the glide slope indicator; if I remember right it would be up next to the altitude tape.)

A little high. A little left. A little low. A lot right. I end up taking us full scale deflection, but manage to save the approach with a little help (where's the speed? where's the altitude?...) There is a lot on these screens that aids situational awareness, but it's also a lot to absorb the first time on glass. It also seems I'm fighting something in the controls. I glance at Mark - no, his hand is not on the stick.

We fly down the runway and go missed. In retrospect, we should have done a touch and go, that would have made the flight a cross country. No matter, hood off, we're returning to Danbury at three thousand feet or so, where we'll do a GPS approach and some landings. We're flying under the cumulous this time, and it's a little bumpier, but since we're closer to the trees, it's prettier in a different way. I try to set the aileron trim for level flight, but it's not working. I'm also a half ball out of center. After some searching, Mark finds the problem. Somehow the autopilot got engaged, and I've been fighting it for a while. Maybe =that's= why I ended up full scale deflected on the approach!

This airplane has a flight director, and on the way back I switch it on to play with it. Essentially, there's a green line with a triangle-shaped slot displayed on the AI on the main computer screen, and one maneuvers the aircraft to put the yellow triangle in the hole (look closely at the display in the picture). Drop dead simple.
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/cfrom_P9200008.JPG (81K)
http://www.flying20club.org/Jose/from_P9200008.JPG (248K)
After playing with that a while, I turn it off to concentrate on outside, and all the other bells and whistles this plane offers.

About halfway home we call approach to get a practice GPS alpha into Danbury. "Call back when you're near Carmel". Well, ok. We power back a bit, and past Oxford we call again, getting vectors. This time I prefer to see the profile view. One switches views by pushing a button to cycle around. There are only four views so that's ok; I'd've preferred a knob but since these are soft keys (their function changes depending on the screen) that would be impractical. The buttons are labeled on the screen, this works well since there is so much screen real estate. Other data fields can be customized, but alas, there is no way to program the customization for several people who might share an aircraft.

I miss a few radio calls because the controller has our call sign a little wrong ("zero" instead of "sierra") and because I'm distracted with all the new stuff to learn. But Mark gets the calls and we're cleared for the approach. Hood on - twenty five hundred, then two thousand, and on this approach the MDA is thirteen sixty. I level off at thirteen sixty, and continue flying towards the runway. Oops... twelve something! Climb! Climb! Pitch trim is critical in this aircraft, and it's very sensitive. Just a skooch here, a skooch there. We set up to do a few landings - Mark will demonstrate the first one, then I'll get to do two. We're running out of time and he has to boogie. This aircraft is landed flatter than most, as opposed to the technique of holding the nose up until it won't fly any more which is used on other singles. We come in high but the airplane descends nicely, and Mark does a perfect landing, and applies power. Once off and climbing, flaps up and i
t's my airplane.

Well, it will take half a million dollars to make it "my" airplane, but you know what I mean!

The trees go by below us, and shortly, far below us, as the airplane climbs quite nicely. Then pull the power back. Way back. Further than that! Only 12 inches of manifold pressure is needed to keep us flying at pattern speed! We're number two, following a Cessna, in sight. How could you miss it - this is one of those days I could see Boston from here! We're below 120, so we can put in half flaps. I elect full flaps as we turn base. That's a little sooner than Mark would have, but it's ok. We continue down, just making sure that we don't hit any of the towers on the hilltops that precede runway 26. Set the power and leave it (I can't resist jockying it a bit as we approach) and don't flare too much. I get a nice landing too! One more time around, this time Danbury extends our base for a helicopter. Danbury slides by below us, and they call our base way out there. I'm still at pattern altitude, which is perfect. U-turn and we're heading for the runway, though
we're going a bit fast. Flaps... oh yeah! They are not big flaps, but they make a lot of difference! This time I flare a bit high, speed drops a bit, but I grease it in. I know about the issue of brake use on the Cirrus, so I don't apply heavy braking to make the taxiway, but rather, let it roll out to the next one. Mark tells me that I could have made it had I done so. Taxiing back for a moment I notice again the castering nosewheel steering, but I get used to that right away, and we park in front of Reliant. As we're getting out, a twin is trying to taxi past a few airplanes next to us, and looks like he's stuck without wingtip clearance and contemplating shutting down. The two of us get out, and confirm that he has the clearance, so he taxis past, extremely grateful for the assistance. I would be too!

There's a lot more to this airplane we could not cover in this short flight, but it is definately a nice craft. And we had the perfect day to fly it. I can't think of a better way to spend the time than in the air this way!

Jose
ps - if anybody has half a million dollars lying around with nothing to do, send it to me and I promise I will show it a good time!
--
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