Advice to become a co-owner

The 60 % higher cruise speed and the high performance in climb, and also the high speeds on descents (i descend with + 200 knots many times) take some time to get used to. I had flown 21 years and close to 1400 hours before I bought the SR22, but it still took me some time. Most peoplel completely underestimate what these + 60 percent in speed mean. You have to think much faster, and you have to plan your descents (like with the VNAV feature of the GPS). You fly much higher cruise altitudes if you want to use it in an efficient way, and that takes an different mindset.

While there is “no prop lever” it still takes time to learn the right procedures to adjust the power (and the prob) the right way) to learn the right LOP procedures with the electronic assistant on the MFD.

If you fly VFR only you can probably be a pretty safe SR22 pilot after ten hours, but if you fly IFR you have to have better systems knowledge, especially about the electric system, the autopilot and some other stuff.

I am pretty sure that for a beginner 20 hours to fly it safely is not unrealistic.

I found the extra speed (150kt v. 100kt) of no relevance.

It depends on the pilot and his/her ability to understand

• performance basics (150kt is not 1500kt)
• aircraft systems especially fancy avionics with loads of interaction, and what happens under fault conditions

A lot of people are OK with the first but not the second, and some vice versa. Someone with an IT or technical/engineering background usually has no problem with either.

And lots of people cannot handle either – that’s something not much discussed on the PPL scene because there is an expectation that if you pay €X you must end up with a piece of paper Y. I know a pilot in this category; he got as far as a bizjet, then a KA and now has accepted he can manage an old twin. He is not able to drive a car with a manual gearbox.

So as I have said several times it depends on the pilot and his/her aptitude. There are no extra flying skills necessary for 150kt v. 100kt (or so).

I find minimum hours for transition training – sorry – stupid. On one side, they set the wrong expectation that after x hours, you are good to go. On the other side, they force people to bore unnecessary holes into the sky.

It took me less than 2 hours and 5 landings to move to the SR22, most of the time was spent on the finer points of handling and getting used to hand flying in IMC. We spent more time discussing CAPS decision scenarios than flying – after all, that was the only thing in that aircraft I hadn’t had before.

I never needed more than 5 hours (and counting a twin, six hours + test) to check out on any type.

And If I now step “down” to a, say, Cub or Pitts Special, I have no idea how long it will take. Never flown a taildragger, it could be anything between 1 and 10 hours or more, no way to find out until I try it….

It takes the time it takes..

We were talking about how long it takes a beginner to safely fly the SR22.

The numbers i used were my estimate based on my personal experience. They were not meant to be absolute or suite every living person.

@Peter
160 or 170 in cruise at 10.000 feet make no difference. The high performance on descent and the necessary planning do make a difference. Since it made a difference to me i am convinced this is true for other pilots too.

Flyer59 wrote:

You have to think much faster, and you have to plan your descents (like with the VNAV feature of the GPS).

If that were to be the case, imagine flying at 300 kts!

You need to anticipate which is different. Anyone flying high needs to plan the descent.

The area where I see the biggest-transition, is the descent. It is here that additional planning, additional feel, and the want to protect you and the aircraft. Dumping the gear, dumping the flaps, closing the throttle and sticking the nose down, too high on downwind, too high on base, too high on final, all comes regularly to mind when pilots are moving to the higher performance aircraft. I think people are kidding themselves when they state, couple of hours in the circuit, and I am now current.

Cobalt wrote:

It takes the time it takes.

I also agree with that. Some, never make it

I agree to that too. I have a friend, +500 h, IR rated who flew the SR22 a couple of hours but who does not like to fly it. To me he said that it feels “too fast for him” and that the avionics are “too much for him”. Instead of becoming my partner in the SR22 he bought a 182.
He says “he feels safer in the 182”. I can accept that (although i find it hard to understand).

People come in all sorts

A one-time business partner of mine, 1980s, way before I even thought about flying, started a PPL at Shoreham. I bumped into his instructor many years later; he said this guy’s reaction time could be measured on a calendar. Well, I knew that from working with him for 13 years! But he was clever; he could do Z80 hardware design and programming in assembler. He would have been fine with modern avionics. But, apparently, flying was an alient concept. And that was in the training spamcans… He gave up part way through.

So if anyone asks me about getting into flying, the first thing I ask them is about their education and background.

Some (a few) people can only just check the air pressure in their car tyres but make very good aerobatic pilots. I don’t know how you would check for that sort of ability other than flying with them. Needless to say, they best keep away from ownership of anything bigger than a kite unless they can throw a load of money all over the place apply sufficient funding to the problem.

A former DC10 pilot friend of mine who prior to that flew C141 and other heavy transports for the US Airforce and prior to that was a navigator and EWO on B52 in SAC told me that some pilots never managed the transition to jets because they could not handle the speeds and stay ahead of the airplane.