Cobalt wrote:
Do not underestimate the need for local maintenance
I think a lot of people underestimate that. Even here, in SoCal, where there are airports and maintenance facilities every few miles, it can easily become a headache. Case in point: three of our club airplanes have recently been upgraded to ADS-B with a Garmin Flightstream 210 also installed. Mainly for cost reasons, our board decided to go for the 210 over the 510 and to have it done at an avionics shop about an hour’s flight away. Now we are finding, that to upgrade the Flightstream 210 firmware (!!) the planes have to be flown to the shop. The shop won’t charge us, but that’s a total of six hours on the airplanes plus downtime. The 510 is user-upgradeable…..
Living in Cyprus I would have a very, very hard look at the local maintenance options and base my decision on that.
Snoopy wrote:
Is there andybody else besides me that has a bad feeling pairing low time pilots with a Cirrus?
One data point here. The outfit I used to rent from had, at one point, three Cirri. Don’t recall which model(s). Within a very short period of time, all three were severely damaged / totaled. Luckily, no serious injuries, IIRC all landing accidents due to incorrect speed (= energy) management.
Can it really be that hard going from one SEP to another? I bought a Mooney with 55 hours TT and after about 8 circuits and some GH with an instructor I had the hang of it. Inside 20 hours I landed on a 580 × 10 runway. Not to say every landing is perfect and I’m not immune to a slight bounce or a float but if you come over the fence at 65 if you’re light and 70 if you’re heavy, it’s hard to get it that wrong. (Obviously asking the flying gods for a prop strike next time I fly)
Not from one SEP to another but from conventional controls to spring loaded. The Cirrus has the spring loaded sideyoke. I first flew it after PPL with 100 hours and I had no problem but I remember I was very astounded by the sensitive handling and power compared to Cessna 172 etc.. a little like a 5000hp turboprop feels after flying a multi engine piston.
A slow mooney feels the same as a slow Piper, Cessna or even Diamond.
A slow Cirrus feels neutral.
It has bitten many. Paired with the sensitive trim and due to different muscle memory in handling the yoke.
I like the Cirrus best on Autopilot flying it like my office plane..i.e. not manually ;)
Low time pilot with money is basically the prime audience that Cirrus directs it’s marketing towards.
I believe the DA40 is „safer“ in the beginning.
The Cirrus is a great option but I would factor in more training, especially use of automation, discontinued approaches when overshooting (instead of banking) and not overestimate the power of the parachute.
I wonder how I ever survived.
Way back when I had my licence for two months, I returned from a 4 hour round-trip from my home airfield (520m asphalt) to an Island strip (around 400m grass) in a PA28-181. I had a total time of 54 hours on my personal clock. (total time, not time after getting my PPL).
I then spent 2 hours with an instructor and 14 landings (3 of them solo) to familiarise myself with a Mooney 201 – which is not quite as fast as an SR22, but cruises at 150-155kt at low VFR altitudes. The first flight after that was a trip to Munich (Riem, the old one, which was quite GA friendly at that time despite all the airliners).
Now, there is no doubt that this was riskier than flying a C150 in the general vicinity of my home field.
Fortunately, I was at a flying school that was encouraging and their advice was mostly “if you want to do X, here is how you could do it”.
What you did is perfectly fine imo and I don’t wonder at all how you survived, while certainly challenging you had the training and obviously the talent to do that.
But is it appicable to this Cirrus SR22 vs. inexperienced pilot topic when focusing specifically on the peculiarities of the cirrus flight controls? I’m not saying it’s a huge issue but it is a factor.
Valentin wrote:
But why not buy SR22, fly up to 200h (or whatever else), sell it and get a Jetprop? Is there any reason to prefer DA40 over SR22?
I thought you’d be getting a new Cirrus and make it your final plane. If it’s a used Cirrus you’re looking for, then fine. I still think DA40 is a great first plane, but that’s just personal bias as I have been flying one for a long time.
There is only one thing about the Cirrus flight controls that is really problematic – that they don’t get used enough because too many fly too much on autopilot. Not different from any modern airliner, in that respect… 
Joking aside – I don’t think the SR22 handling is particularly poor, nor particularly nice. The controls are perfectly fine in pitch, but the breakout force needed to move the side-yoke out of the centre position in roll can make it feel twitchy in roll and lead to a bit of overcontrolling in roll until one gets used to it. And much has been written about the annoyingly fast trim. Both you get use to both.
But almost every aircraft has its quirks. Cessnas feel mushy, the PA32 flies like a wet sponge, the Mooney has very little yoke travel in roll and feels like a 60s car without power steering (I quite like that, others don’t), I don’t see the SR22 stand out, neither particularly good nor bad.
Cobalt wrote:
I don’t see the SR22 stand out, neither particularly good nor bad.
So you’d say a 100 hour pilot will face exactly the same circumstances flying an sr22 vs. a da40?
I say again the cirrus is not a big deal if one accounts for more training and some of it’s peculiarities.
why were there so many accidents in the first few years after launching the cirrus?
We did this before in many previous threads and it caused a lot of trouble The people in question are long gone though.
My view is that it starts with Cirrus marketing which in the USA was run with attractive ads showing an SR22 next to a high-end car, with a good looking pilot (with very good hair), next to him a good looking woman with a big smile and next to them good looking children with big smiles. The implication being: buy an SR22 and you get all the other stuff Later, Cessna took this somewhat further with ads for the C400/TTX showing a “businessman” saying he manages several customer visits in a day because he flies himself. But everyone who has climbed the food chain to an IR and a capable plane knows that flying isn’t quite like that; you just don’t get the despatch rate of a pressurised turboprop or a jet with radar etc. And marketing, if done right, will draw out the customers which it is aimed at i.e. an SR22 can be flown just like driving a car. And Cirrus did all of GA a huge favour by creating a whole new stratum of customers; not the rather conservative types who have traditionally formed the bulk of the GA customer base. Obviously only a small % of the customers really thought it was like driving a car but you need only a very small % to do so to create loads of accidents. In one thread, someone did post the whole list of chute pulls and IMHO the inescapable conclusion from reading that list was that many/most were in quite silly circumstances, and more to the point different to the circumstances in which people crash other aircraft types. Adding to the mix were people like Mr Beach (a high priest in the Cirrus scene) with his famous sermon of “Pull early, pull often” which some people clearly took literally, and the clearly bogus “chute pull = lives saved” claim from Marketing, which implies the type cannot ever be force landed.
We are now years down the road and Cirrus did type specific training which insurers in the US made mandatory – for those who want insurance which is probably most flying these types.
I have flown the SR22 and it handles similarly to a TB20 in normal speeds, and from speaking to many others, including recently one guy who was lucky to be alive after a crash following stall in the circuit, it is capable of biting you very suddenly if you probe the low speed handling regime.
So you’d say a 100 hour pilot will face exactly the same circumstances flying an sr22 vs. a da40
Absolutely not ~ the DA40 is much slower, has a lower wing loading and is much lighter. It is also underpowered in it’s Thielert Diesel incarnation.
I actually said the exact opposite – going from trainers into somehting like it will objectively increase risk (so does flying at allj, but not to something special, and Peter said it all – a bit of training will sort him.
