I think it’s very useful to touch the chute handle and clearly call out „CAPS AVAILABLE“ passing 500ft AGL. I also mentally go through grabbing the handle and pulling it with both hands, including imagining the resistance force.
When SHTF, the startle is real, and unless you imagined to pull the CAPS handle immediately (i.e. you positively decided to use it), you might wait too long or forget to even consider it.
See the above flat spin example. Things can happen quickly.
Well, garbage to one person is a useful discussion to another.
Well, of course now that the other thread has been moved to the ‚why do we need a chute‘ thread my comment above is entirely useless and may be deleted :)) ^^
Someone asked me if an SR22 can “fly” after somebody pulled the chute.
Obviously it won’t be able to even exceed Vs, with so much drag, but do the vertical stabiliser and rudder have any directional control?
For example if pulled at 5000ft, you have a few mins before it reaches the ground, and in that time you could get it away from the middle of a town, for example.
Maybe it can fly like a powered paraglider if the engine keeps running?
I believe they have round canopies rather than the ram-air chutes used by paragliders. It’s an interesting question, but I suspect one might end up oscillating a lot, and I think in most cases it would be better to cool the engine before landing.
Cirrus originally had CAPS because of controllability issues in high drag regimes at slow speeds, I doubt it can cruise in a stable fashion near VS on chute drag with 310hp out of the engine…
IMO a chute is a very useful safety feature. If you are advised to identify it as part of the check list and brief passengers on it, I see no problem, other than if you fly different aircraft you would perhaps need to read the check list rather than considering yourself so familiar that you will remember it.
Whether to pull it or not is for the PIC to decide. IIUC Cirrus run training courses or issue recommendations to help pilot’s make such decisions. I see little point in spending a lot of money to buy and maintain a particular aircraft (suggesting that you trust that manufacturer to build the aircraft and its safety features) if you are then going to debate the worth of their guidance on its emergency procedures
Off topic, perhaps I missed it, but why did a Cirrus with 2 pilots on board go into a flat spin at 5000ft? And perhaps more to the point why were they unable to recover from it?
Ibra wrote:
Cirrus originally had CAPS because of controllability issues in high drag regimes at slow speeds,
Why do people continue to post this utter BS? The “controllability issues” does not even make sense since a parachute does not help here. At least the – equally false – statement that “it could not pass spin tests” was plausible…
I doubt it can cruise in a stable fashion near VS on chute drag with 310hp out of the engine…
There may however be a little bit of directional control, from the propwash passing over the VS + rudder.
There have been quite a few chute deployments with a fully functioning aircraft but I doubt anybody tried to test this in the heat of the moment 
gallois wrote:
Off topic, perhaps I missed it, but why did a Cirrus with 2 pilots on board go into a flat spin at 5000ft? And perhaps more to the point why were they unable to recover from it?
I think a big part of the guidance to use the parachute at the earliest opportunity is that if the pilot has lost control he already made a bad mistake, and to expect a pilot who failed in the basic task of maintaining control to then, under stress, succeed in the more advanced task of regaining control, is perhaps too high an expectation.
Of course there are exceptions, but on average, I guess people are better off pulling. YMMV.
