By Rod Douglas 

I know lots of people who love to play with flight simulators. I know lots of people who love to play with airplanes. Today I discovered what happens when the reality of both collides.

Cirrus has created a base line in personal flying with its innovative and evolutionary approach. Simple, safe and fast. Built for people who want to fly, not those who already do. Make it better, year in, year out. Add technologies. Add features. Work them in based on what the buyers say they want, rather than what engineers think they should want.

And hey presto, suddenly you have the Garmin Perspective by Cirrus. Now much has been written by many on the value and improvement that’s been bought through glass cockpits. In its initial iterations it took navigation from somewhere deep in the cerebral cortex and put it on screens in front of you.  In the succeeding incarnations, the glass cockpit has taken many of the things that made flying a ‘hopeful’ skill and made them explicit to everyone. Things like traffic. Lightning detection. Control zone steps. TAS. Terrain. Top of descent. Range. The list goes on.

I’ve been trying to get strapped into a Perspective for months. And months. And months. When it finally happened, Perspective was something that I’d experienced over and over again on…you guessed it…a flight simulator! Stunning. The amazing graphics, colours and clarity of flight simulators with an aircraft to play with as well.

And what a sensational match it makes. Now I’ve put in a fair few hours behind the panel of G1000 equipped aircraft over the past few years. The G1000 was launched in 2004 – yep that’s right, GA integrated panels have been around for five years in the form of the G1000 and another three if you head back to Avidyne and even a couple more if you wander on back to the Chelton system. This has conditioned pilots to expect technological revolution to now be the driver of GA development.

That said, I’ve been a vocal critic of the legacy airframe developer who has simply missed the opportunity to actually reinvent their aircraft around a game-changing set of technologies. Whether it’s Cessna, Mooney or Piper, their solution to this new and dramatic revolution was as dumb as simply stripping out the steam driven gauges, switches, control heads, radios and navigators and replacing them with a couple of big flat panels.

Where’s the fun in that? Cessna did take a different approach with the Mustang but a clean sheet design is ever so much easier than the innovation required to evolve a current platform.

While nobody would ever suggest that the engineers at those three great legacy manufacturers delivered anything but exceptional safety…it must be bloody boring working there. Where’s the creativity, the opportunity to do different and be better? Dead in the water would be my guess.

The first challenge to accepting the legacy platform approach came from a pair of plastic fantastic companies that both grew up in the exciting world of homebuilt aircraft. I bet neither Cirrus nor Columbia (the now Cessna Corvalis range) really like anyone reminding them that they were born in a world where experimentation was the daily discipline. It does, however, prove just one thing. Game changing innovation never emerges from the incumbents.

So what did they do different? Basically they looked at what people really wanted. They took very different views of the world but actually came up with fairly similar solutions. Cirrus is now king in the personal transportation field. They took an integrated view of safety as being the primary driver. Columbia (‘Lancair Certified’ before the first name and ownership change) followed their heritage with a focus on speed. The solution. Composite, big donk on the front, fixed gear, low drag, automobile-like interior. You slide into the aircraft and everything you need is built in around the pilot. Wide cockpits with plenty of room and lots of space in the back.

Cirrus went out for safety as the primary driver. It used to be that a twin gave you redundancy. Then the statistics taught us that the flying qualities of a failed engine killed as many people as singles with a failed engine. So we stopped building light twins and Cirrus replaced the other engine with a parachute. You still hit the ground but the ‘Jesus handle’ gave you a hope and a prayer if it all went really wrong. Ever since they’ve been refining and creating new models that have motivated people to upgrade. A great lesson learned from the automotive industry and one that has meant that in Australia there are a handful of pilots who are on to their third Cirrus in about eight short years. Who ever heard of someone buying a new 182 because they’d brought out a new version?

It seems that Cessna is struggling to give away the Corvalis, at least in Australia. Worldwide they are doing better, but Cirrus continues to outsell them by a factor of five to one. It’s another fantastic aircraft, which deserves so much better than the response it’s currently getting. It’s faster, competitively priced and, arguably, a little crisper in the handling department.

I suspect that while Cessna bought it to give it an option to compete with Cirrus, it doesn’t know what to do against a runaway market leader. Cessna holds that position with the Citation, and enjoys the arrogance that 35 years of defining the light corporate jet market brings, but I suspect it lacks the courage to spend the money to fight the guerilla war needed to really threaten Cirrus. Silly part is that it’s probably far better funded, knows how to treat its owners and has the distribution and service capability to easily outpace Cirrus. It needs to think really differently, put a parachute into the aircraft and drive efficiency to reduce the price point to create a differentiation.

But then Cessna’s are for pilots and Cirrus’ are for people who dream of flying and can afford to. And the difference between the two? Pilots are often short of a dollar, whereas the people who dream of flying can afford to do it now.

So what’s that mean when it comes to the Perspective and the genuine innovation that Cirrus continues to push? I met Mark Blake, General Manager of Cirrus Australia, at the Cirrus hangar at Archerfield where the aircraft are reassembled in Australia for the Asia Pacific market to walk around the G3 Turbo and have a look at the differences that come with the step up to the Perspective.

I’ve got a few hundred hours in the Cirrus so stepping into the cockpit was a familiar experience. The first thing I did notice as a definite change was the sculpture of the seats. The G3 Turbo has a genuine 1,000 nm range which prompted a redesign of the seat with significantly more lumbar support. As I sat down I wasn’t convinced they’d got it right but when I stepped out after a couple of hours I was convinced that it was a definite improvement.

For all the room that is in a Cirrus compared to other speedsters like the Mooney Ovation or Acclaim, if you’re tall there is definitely a limit to how vertical the rear pitch can be. At 178 cms I often find it more comfortable to push the seat back one click. A comfortable way to fly but one that often challenged the reach of my arms when dealing with the Avidyne setup. Well you can be assured that’s gone with Perspective. Set the seat however you want to and all the controls fall naturally to your finger tips. This is a result of the fantastic FMS (flight management system) control head that now fills the real estate that used to be dedicated to the avionics stack.

Sitting before you are a couple of big, and I mean big, screens just waiting for the journey to begin. This is one of the things I really love about the Cirrus approach. The whole experience is designed around the pilot. Lock the door and your left arm falls naturally onto the arm rest and your hand lands on the side stick. Your other elbow sits gently upon the centre console, which gives you a large and secure place to store all the paraphernalia for the flight. Your finger tips rest below the FMS just waiting to caress the keys with your next set of instruction.

One of the really significant improvements that arrived with the G2 series was a significant lift in the quality of the interior fit. And it just keeps getting better. The G3 we were flying was a GTS model which is simple terms means ‘a Cirrus with the lot’. There are some further options but they are mission specific options rather than needs. No point in flying around with the weight of the excellent automotive style climate control air-conditioning if you live in a cold place where known ice is a given. On the other hand, who needs known ice if every day you need air-conditioning?

Standard inclusions start with a sumptuous leather interior, airbags to every seat and Synthetic Vision on the screens. Add Known Ice, oxygen (at least for the turbo), and a Platinum engine and you have one competent time machine.

And people just love to buy them that way. The majority of Cirrus sales are for the GTS.

While I’d been exploring the ‘oh so familiar’ cockpit, the Cirrus boys had been off trying to negotiate an ILS into Brisbane to allow me to see how the integration of the features on this amazing pocket rocket work in the IFR world. It didn’t happen, so we planned for a couple of RNAV approaches into the Gold Coast and then Lismore, followed by some low level VFR tracking back through the mountains before air work over Jacobs Well to test out the new LVL (level) function of the GFC700 autopilot.

This is yet another of the safety-first tools that Cirrus continues to integrate for people who want to fly rather than pilots. It’s a change of mindset that has taken years to be accepted in the instructing world but that makes great sense.

I walked the traditional path when I learnt to fly. I started off in 150s and 152s. Moved to 172s for cross countries. Did my constant speed endorsement in a 182, added undercarriage in a 182 RG and, when I finally got serious about touring, jumped into a 210. Along the way I flew Archers and Arrows, Mooneys and Decathalons but I was fundamentally the product of the Cessna Pilot Centre’s programme.

Well, the world has changed now. Lots of people simply buy an SR22 and when their aircraft is delivered they learn to fly in it. Ab-initio through to CIR and anything else they happen to want to add. The grumpy old flying instructors who have been doing it for years hate the idea. They point out that if you learn to fly a technologically complex aircraft that you won’t have the experience to fly the crappy old fleet with their steam gauges, faded paint and chronic under performance.

To which I ask, “why in God’s good name would someone who owns a beautiful new Cirrus ever bother to do that?”

In fact in the US, Cirrus Access offers a programme that delivers a personal instructor for 12 months who becomes your personal pilot and mentor and who initially flies you on all your flights while delivering the syllabus for your pilot’s license until you graduate free and experienced.

That’s the sort of innovation that Cirrus has bought to selling aircraft to the people who want to fly. Plenty of money, brains, and a shortage of time. Own your own aircraft, fly to your own schedule with your personal pilot and instructor and become a competent pilot at the same time. Great thinking, great airplane.

With a plan in hand, I fired up the avionics. The first thing I noticed was how quickly the screens lit up and were ready to go. One of the inevitable frustrations with the previous Avidyne system was a lengthy wait for the system to run through its self-checking process and the alignment of the AHRDS. While it took under a minute, when you’re sitting on the ground and every minute costs you $6 or $7 dollars it seemed like an eternity.

The screens are big. And bright. But most of all they are beautiful. This is where I started to really appreciate what has been available for so long in the flight sim world where acres of computing power meant that realism had an edge over reality.

The Perspective is generation three of GA integrated cockpits. The first generation was the display based system, such as the Chelton and Avidyne, that took the remarkable amount of information that was dormant within the cockpit and dragged it all into a coordinated display which dramatically lifted situational awareness. Next came the G1000 integration which delivered the sort of system-based integration that has been de riguer within the transport and high-end corporate jet world. This level bought the integration of all the avionics into a system with complete redundancy and a level of logic that simplified the process but still left a requirement for dramatic pilot education in what are typically described as ‘technologically complex aircraft’.

Ironically, my experience has been that the so called generation one Avidyne system required very little from me to get up to speed and operate effectively. The complexity at this level came within the navigation rather than the presentation system which was intuitive and obvious. The inherent complexity of the GPS navigators, across the board, contain huge capability buried within immensely complex menu structures. No issue if you’re using them every day but more of a challenge for the owner pilot. Every flight I’d find myself having a play with the 430’s to find something new, or remember something that I’d forgotten or was still a little obscure.

That contrasts significantly to my experience with the G1000. Now to be fair the couple of dozen hours that I’ve put in behind a G1000 have all been done in aircraft while I was test flying. No training, minimum book reading, just figure out the story I’m going to tell, convert it to a mission, jump in and go with a completely competent individual sitting in the right seat. It’s hardly the right way to approach flying incredibly capable and fully integrated computers, with the critical mission support they provide in every flight.

That said, I never got to the point of finding them intuitive. The menu structures and soft key methodology resulted in much screen searching and I always felt like a hopeful pilot rather than a professional one. No doubt a comprehensive two day G1000 course would have fixed that but really, is that the way flying should be going?

I have a different view. In the computing world it’s the Apple Microsoft divide. Apple’s view is that everything should make so much sense that when you’re pointed in the right direction, your intuitive will take care of the rest. Simple is right. Microsoft seems to love complexity. Jam the features in and win is their model.

So, in my simple mind, I always relaxed when I got back into an Avidyne Entegra equipped aircraft. It didn’t do everything, or even close to everything that a G1000 would, but it did more than enough to allow me to safely prosecute my mission.

Cirrus is adamant that the Perspective is NOT a G1000 installation. It’s a G1000 based system developed for Cirrus that uses the hardware and most of the software of the G1000. So what’s smart about Perspective by Cirrus?

Put together in total secrecy, it takes integration through the FMS to a new level of simplicity. You simply don’t need to touch the screens for anything unless you choose to. Every part of navigating and communicating rests beneath the tips of your right hand fingers.

All the best of the G1000 is there. Amazing, I mean truly amazing, quality graphics on two big 12 inch screens fill your scan with more information than you can imagine. Synthetic Vision Technology, the ‘Highway in the Sky’ (HITS) system, that visually represents the path of flight and the vector target that tells you exactly where you will end up if you continue with your current control inputs makes flightpath thinking redundant.  As you fly is as you see it on the screen. I can’t quite imagine what it’s like learning to fly VFR in this aircraft as every input is translated and represented on the screens in front. Maybe they’ll make PFD covers a required option?

The GFC700 digital autopilot has smarts that leaves for dead the already excellent S-tec 55x that it replaces. Fly an approach, watch the autopilot fly perfect rate one turns that land you on approach with the most perfectly carved turns you can imagine.

All of which is, with the exception of the FMS, just more, bigger and brighter than we previously had. Then you come to that big beautiful blue LVL button right in the middle of the FMS. When Cirrus started kicking all the other airframe manufacturers’ butts I was silly enough to think that a whole lot of other manufacturers might follow the lead (and the wallets) of the buyers who wanted the redundancy of an airframe parachute system.

Nobody did.

The ‘Level’ button is another game-changing technology that should be adopted by every single manufacturer. It doesn’t do much. It simply instructs the autopilot to engage and positively command the aircraft to straight and level flight. Simple really.

And lifesaving.

No one wants to use a parachute to safely arrive on the ground. No one wants to have to push a blue button to get back into straight and level flight. I struggled to find a recent statistic on the number of lives saved by the parachute but five years ago it was nine. We’ll never know how many lives a little blue button will save but, when you read the statistics on loss of control accidents, you realise just how valuable it could be. And, while it’s not exclusive to Perspective, I can’t imagine how any ‘controlled flight into terrain’ accidents could ever occur with this system.

The Turbo Alley modified IO550 is a very Cirrus-like solution. Fire it up, start rolling. It’s turbo normalised. There is almost no engine management required and certainly none of the ‘it’s turbo charged we need to manage it carefully’ that used to accompany grumpy flight instructor briefings on a technology that is still resisted as wasteful in this country.

We taxied for runway 28 at Archerfield with one eye to the new GAAP airport procedures while watching our progress on the MFD’s airport map. Run-ups and pre-departure checklists are a breeze with little leaning or reaching required and are all driven from the FMS.

Cleared for a departure with left turn required before the other threshold, I rolled out on to the runway while switching off the air-conditioning and there before me was the absolute collision of the inside and the outside matching. Look up and there stretched before me was the centre line with a big 28 at the nose. Look down and there was the centerline with a big 28 at the nose. Bloody amazing.

Smoothly feeding the power, the SR22 leapt away from the ground with crisp controls and a reminder of how technology is revolutionizing general aviation. The optional yaw damper takes much of the work out of the right foot. I mean honestly, how lazy are the pilots that fly these aircraft when they need a yaw damper for 310 hp? Nobody needs a yaw damper on an SR22 right? Well, ask the people in the back. The ride is apparently dramatically improved. Pilots often like to think of themselves as masters of the universe but I think, deep down, we all know that autopilots fly more smoothly than we do and yaw dampers dance on the pedals far quicker than we ever could.

We tracked for Jacobs Well and the first of the RNAV’s that were to demonstrate just how capable the Perspective is. I was always delighted by the simplicity of the lean assist on the EMax system. Well that’s gone. Now you simply have a blue line on the fuel flow. Set the mixture to align with the blue line and you’re flying at lean of peak. Anytime and every time. No rules to remember: just set and forget. Flying for dummies.

As we tracked out, the layers of sophistication within the system became obvious. Many of them are really simple, obvious little things that the computing power and integration makes possible. Whether that’s the choice between a vertical speed climb or a FLC (flight level change) selection of a climb speed, or the perfect clarity of a pair of range rings, one of which gives intact reserves and one which gives dead head range, including wind compensation, there is layer upon layer of simple guidance that makes human error all that more difficult.

I’d started the flight the way I usually do when flying a flight test. A simple agreement with the co-pilot that I’d aviate and navigate and that he’d communicate and traffic spot. I like that arrangement particularly when I’m dealing with new aircraft or new equipment because it allows me to focus on the aircraft and where we are while ensuring that the other tasks are covered.

What delighted me was that, by the time we were halfway into the first approach, my level of familiarity with the system was such that I was taking back the communicate function and slipping easily into the pilot in command mindset that is single pilot IFR. After the complexity of the G1000, the subtle changes that Cirrus has pulled together in Perspective were proving to be both intuitive and powerful.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, can get lost with this system. Once you’re turned towards an airport the identifier appears on top of a great big advertising pointer that makes it absolutely clear where to look when your eyes come out of the cockpit to the real world. As you start down and get to pattern height, the identifier has shifted to the runway identifier. It’s magic stuff that takes safety to a complete new level. The first owner of a Perspective-equipped Cirrus in Australia, Miles Gorr Brown, a Cathay A330 captain, said it best when he declared that the integration was better than he got at work.

We cancelled IFR after a touch and go at Lismore so I could test the Synthetic Vision and TAWS working together during a bit of mountain - well ok, hill and valley - flying. Out behind Lismore sits Mt Warning and the caldera. Lots of up and down and plenty of valleys, including the beautiful Numinbar Valley.

The combination of incredible accurate terrain mapping with the accuracy of the vector projection of track allows the synthetic vision to use luscious orange and luminous red to wash over any country before you that is at risk of collision. It was like an arcade game. Turn towards a peak and watch it turn firstly orange and then bright red before the terrain warnings started. You’d have to be asleep to fly into anything. Then again, that won’t be due to carbon monoxide poisoning because the there is a built-in sensor in the Perspective.

It was a pretty windy day and we were getting a bit of a bashing from the mechanical turbulence over the hills but no matter what was happening, the Perspective kept the picture straight. The accuracy of the terrain is remarkable, which is fundamentally a result of a space shuttle mission a few years ago that laser mapped the whole planet. A mind boggling use of technology to deliver a mindboggling in-cockpit experience that is simply as good, if not better, than anything that is available for any money in the corporate jet market.

Once again the safety implications are extraordinary. If you always know where the rocks are and you’re constantly, and I mean constantly, being warned of it, it’s pretty hard to fly into the hard stuff. It was so dogmatic that eventually we simply had to turn off the TAWS warnings because when you’re flying up a valley at 500 feet you have a permanent TAWS warning. One of the nice features of the Perspective is the capacity to select whether you’re nagged by an electronic male or female copilot. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my wife so I selected the feminine form.

As we popped out over the Hinze Dam and climbed to altitude I reflected on the fact that no amount of electronic gadgetry can take away from the fact that flying an aircraft requires you to be making decisions every instant. At a couple of hundred knots, you’re covering a little more than three miles a minute or about three times the rate at which the world moves when you’re driving a car. More people have undoubtedly been killed by getting behind the aircraft than anything else and an up to date understanding of the circumstances of the flight is critical.

The closest and best idea I’ve seen to slow this process down and create space to improve decision-making under pressure remains the previously mentioned little blue LVL button. We tracked direct to Jacobs Well on climb to 4000 ft to test it out. I started slowly with some unusual attitude recoveries. Every instrument rated pilot has to get really comfortable with these because they undoubtedly reappear with every renewal. Instructor takes over, close your eyes while he disorientates you and then gives you back the aircraft. Resolve the situation without bending the airplane.

So that’s what I did. Steep turns nose high. Hit the button. Tight spiral descents pulling in. Hit the button. Power off stalls. Hit the button. Power on stalls, wait for the break. Hit the button. Every time the same outcome. Straight and level and time to think.

As I turned home, following the M1 using the most basic of IFR navigation techniques (I follow roads), I contemplated just what the Perspective has bought to Cirrus. The Cirrus remains an aircraft for people who want to fly. Safe, fast, comfortable. But you know what? No matter how crusty and old you are, no matter how much you love your old bird with its classic steam gauges, no matter why you fly. Technology is here and it is safer. The more people embrace it, the less pilots will die.

As I was cleared to land with a change to 28 right I thought about the first time I’d flown a Cirrus in 2001. Back then it was an SR20. Back then it was the parachute. Back then I could see that it was the future. With Perspective, Cirrus leads the way again. The outside and the inside have absolutely collided in the most positive way. I can only hope that the rest of the industry stops trying to justify why the old way is better and starts blatantly copying. Give me more parachutes, more integrated avionics, more little blue buttons and more reasons for wealthy pilots to upgrade and refresh the fleet.

Every new and integrated Cirrus that lands in this country will generate new pilots who will love to fly just as I do. Will they have to do it hard like I did? No chance. Will I hold that against them? Never. Bring on more innovation, bring on more brand new pilots, let’s share our passion and lets all become stronger for it. Cirrus, you’ve done it again.