From what I read the SR20 design is not, I repeat not forgiving on landings.
Every pilot says they have problems. You have to be precise or else your in a “Hard Bounce” or a “Drop.” Flare high and you’re doomed. “Fly it in.” “Needs a shallow approach.” “Hard to slow down.” “Has a long run out to the end with no room to spare.” “Tires blow out in a 100 hours.”
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Am I reading your posts correctly?
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If so, is Cirrus doing something to make landing less difficult?
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If not, how does landing stack up against other planes – Mooney, Piper Arrow, Beach Bonanza, Cessna 201?
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Is this just the nature of the beast that everyone wants to live with?
It seems there has been no meaningful response from anyone really familiar with the plane to say what the real situation is.
Tell me more!!!
From what I read the SR20 design is not, I repeat not forgiving on landings.
Every pilot says they have problems. You have to be precise or else your in a “Hard Bounce” or a “Drop.” Flare high and you’re doomed. “Fly it in.” “Needs a shallow approach.” “Hard to slow down.” “Has a long run out to the end with no room to spare.” "Tires blow out in a 100 >From what I read the SR20 design is not, I repeat not forgiving on landings.
Not true. The landing gear on the Cirrus is very much like the gear on the Grumman Tiger. The main gear is built to absorb hard landings and “recover” nicely.
Every pilot says they have problems. You have to be precise or else your in a “Hard Bounce” or a “Drop.” Flare high and you’re doomed. “Fly it in.” “Needs a shallow approach.” “Hard to slow down.” “Has a long run out to the end with no room to spare.” “Tires blow out in a 100 hours.”
The plane does require some attention to slow it down, but the nice side of that same coin is low parasitic drag. The approach can be steep or shallow depending on what you want. The approach is a little steeper and faster than that of a Grumman Tiger. Like the Tiger is you attempt to land “hot” you will pass up a lot of runway in coming to a stop. If you fly the numbers there is not a problem with landing. However, one does need to get used to the landing “sight picture” in order to judge when to flair, etc. The tire that blew was due to two things: 1) the tires were light duty tires, which Cirrus admitted to me were a mistake Â… someone ordered and installed the wrong tires. The tire that blew on landing was worn to the cords AND the plane was flown by someone that had only two or three landings in a Cirrus. While his landing was somewhat harder than usual it was NOT the cause of the tire blowing. And (b) there was a “camber” issue on the wheels. Cirrus made some initial estimates as to how much weight people would fly and land with and made some adjustments to their thinking about this incident. Cirrus stood behind the product Â… realigned the gear, replaced the tires, and is monitoring wear as we fly. By the way the tire blew with over 160 hours Â… a far cry from what we should get to time on tires.
- Am I reading your posts correctly?
- If so, is Cirrus doing something to make landing less difficult?
Practice, practice, practice Â…
- If not, how does landing stack up against other planes – Mooney, Piper Arrow, Beach Bonanza, Cessna 201?
The Cirrus stacks up very nicely will all of the above (I’ve flown them all at one time or another). The low wing of the Cirrus gives a nice “cushion of air” that tends to soften the landing. I find it easy to put it down very softly.
- Is this just the nature of the beast that everyone wants to live with?
Absolutely, I love this plane and now have over 240 hours in mine!
It seems there has been no meaningful response from anyone really familiar with the plane to say what the real situation is.
Hopefully, you get the picture. There are some issues with this plane especially as we “ham handed” customers get our hands on the real thing, but so far Cirrus has been right there tweaking this and that to improve the product. There has been nothing major to date. So far this plane is doing very well especially when you compare the issues on a newly designed SR20 plane to the problems Cessna is having in bringing back 1970s “technology”.
Tell me more!!!
If you want more let me know Â… I would be happy to talk flying nearly anytime. Email me your phone number Â…
I have landed the SR20 twice from the left seat (both time on demo flights, with a Cirrus test pilot in the right seat), and I’ve been in the front seat of the plane for eight or ten other landings. I am the farthest thing from the King Of Smooth Landings, nor the king of first-hand experience with the Cirrus. But FWIW putting the plane down seemed no huge challenge. The very first (of two) landings I did by myself was about as nice a landing as I’m capable of, and the other one involved a minor bump but nothing out of the ordinary (for me).
My larger sense was that every plane has idiosynicracies on landing, so it takes time to get used to any of them. In my limited flying career I’ve done many hundreds with a C-172, several dozen with Cherokees, about 30 in a C-182 RG, and a handful in a Baron and a C-414. Each required adjustment – the Cherokee because of low-wing “float,” the 182 because it was so much heavier than the 172 and seemed to want to thud out of the sky. (It was the 182 that made me think: I am never going to learn to land this plane.) The adjustment necessary for the SR20 seemed no greater than that for other planes – or so I say, on the basis of my few experiences. Jim fallows