It's Not Your Father's Airplane
By Tom Benenson
January 2009
 "Got along without you 'fore I met you, gonna get along without you now." So there, Garmin Perspective in the Cirrus SR22! Just as the lyrics suggest, my feelings are mixed. I'd love to be able to get along with the Perspective-equipped Cirrus, but frankly, that option is above my pay grade.
I've struggled along with the panel I have ... well, that's not accurate ... I've enjoyed the avionics I've acquired to enhance my Cardinal's panel since I bought it with a partner more than 20 years ago. Originally, equipped with a pair of ARC navcoms and an ADF, it had an adequate and capable panel for IFR operations. Over the years we worked down a "wish" list. I've forgotten the chronology but a Northstar loran was an early addition and a backup vacuum system seemed important. When Judith wondered why we didn't have an instrument to tell us where thunderstorms lurked, I explained there was one, but that it was expensive. "Buy one," she insisted and that's how a Stormscope 900 found its way to the panel.
The loran gave up its place in the stack to a UPS GX60 that included a comm radio, which ended up cascading into the UPS panel that was so temptingly displayed on the back of Trade-A-Plane. The GX60 and SL30 navcom booted the pair of ARC radios off the team, which necessitated a new switching panel that was up to properly handling what at the time were state-of-the-art avionics.
The stack didn't quite look like the UPS stack in the ad since the MX20 multifunction display was missing. When I showed Judith the ad and explained which boxes we were putting in the panel, she wondered why I didn't include the MX20. Again, I explained it was expensive. "Would it make flying safer?" she asked. "Probably, certainly easier." "So? Let's just do it!" she said. I know, I know, she's a keeper! And now the MX20 has been upgraded by replacing it with the GMX 200.
Since most of my flying has been in my own Cessna Cardinal, I haven't had the glass-panel experience that might be expected with my title, so I was thrilled when Kate Dougherty said that she and Matt Bergwall were bringing a Cirrus SR22-GTS Turbo to the East Coast and would drop in at Columbia County to let me get some (side) stick time.
The Cirrus isn't a small airplane and makes an impressive statement on the ramp. Sitting comfortably inside the Cirrus, I got a kick out of the stares from friends who were obviously envious. I'll admit I waved and smiled smugly; even without leaving the FBO, I was already enjoying the flight.
Matt patiently led me through the starting procedures and introduced me to the Perspective panel. If you've been reading Flying I don't have to explain what the Garmin Perspective does for the Cirrus. Robert Goyer wrote extensively about the Perspective in the August issue of Flying, so I'm not going to dwell on the details but more about my response to it.
The displays are large. In fact, they have a 35 percent larger viewing area than most Garmin displays. And there's no question they present virtually every bit of information a pilot could ever think of needing. In addition to the typically expected data (including engine monitors, weather, traffic, moving maps, navigation details, approach charts and airport diagrams) the Perspective panel adds Garmin's SVT (synthetic vision technology) with Highway in the Sky fly-through boxes, traffic depictions and color-coded terrain.
Another option on the airplane they brought for me to play with was an EVS (enhanced vision system) that was still under wraps until its official announcement at AOPA Expo in November. The Max-Viz EVS-600 system, mounted under the left wing, displayed an image of what it could see ahead that I couldn't. In fact, when we landed we were able to see a deer crossing the runway that would have been virtually impossible to see in the dark without the EVS. (The EVS-600 is specifically designed for Cirrus and, unlike Max-Viz's EVS-100 for general aviation, features both a long-wave infrared [IR] camera and a visible light camera. The images from the two cameras are combined to produce a single fused image. The IR does not "see" visible light but does render a highly resolved picture of the world; the visible light sensing function enables the EVS to depict runway and approach lighting as well as airborne traffic at night.)
The thing that I found most interesting was how the airplane coddles the pilot ... both physically and procedurally. Once the doors were closed and the engine running, it took me a couple moments to realize I hadn't activated the noise-canceling feature on my headset. It was that quiet.
During the takeoff run and initial climb-out I wasn't conscious that I was using a sidestick control rather than a wheel; it felt that natural. After level off, when I went to lean the engine, Matt pointed out that all I had to do was bring back the mixture control to line up the fuel flow with a little blue line on the display of the CHT and EGT on the MFD. The blue line indicated the ideal lean-of-peak mixture for the current conditions. Once it was set, Matt said that any change in the throttle position would automatically maintain the ideal mixture. That was easy.
Although I knew the autopilot, the Garmin GFC 700, is supremely capable, I hand-flew the Cirrus rather than turning the chore over to "George." I expect the Cirrus is routinely flown with the autopilot engaged and that makes sense. The autopilot is going to be a lot smoother and accurate than most of us and, although using the sidestick felt natural, I did find that I wanted to relieve my left arm from having to constantly hold it. At one point, I even reached out with my right hand for a control wheel before I realized there was no wheel there.
The Highway in the Sky guides the pilot through whatever flight plan or procedure is loaded. There's a small green circle with tiny wings, the flight path indicator, that shows where the airplane is actually going, not where it's aiming. With the green pip in the center of the boxes, the system took me around and down right to the end of the runway.
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