Flying the Sportsman

Today I finally got to get some flight time in the Glasair Sportsman 2+2.  I have made two previous trips up to Arlington, WA to the factory to fly one, but the weather has never worked out.  Today however it was a beautiful sunny day and I made it up there to go fly.  My thanks goes out to Nick for working me into his schedule on short notice to fly the Sportsman and to take it to lunch.  The demo aircraft I flew was a fiberglass Sportsman with the IO-390 Lycoming engine and the two-blade Hartzell propeller.

After looking over the plane and talking a bit we taxied the plane out and did a run-up before departing.  The plane taxied with great ease and the castering nose wheel made it feel much like the Cirrus, so adapting to it wasn’t a big deal.  We did our run-up and departed Arlington Municipal (KAWO) climbing to 4500’ direct to Roche Harbor (WA09).  Airspeeds are all a bit different than the Cirrus in that we rotated at 60kts with Vx being 75 and Vy being 85.  Right off the bat I was really impressed with the responsiveness and the push back into the seat that the IO-390 provided.  At 210hp, it has a lot of snap and we were off the ground very quickly.  Climbing to altitude went very quickly since the plane has plenty of ability with full fuel an only two of us on board.  Without trying we were easily 1000-1500’ fpm climb.  Once at altitude, I fiddled around with the Advanced Flight 5000 PFD/MFD.  The plane was really easy to fly and getting it trimmed out was much easier than any Cirrus I have ever flown.  It too has electric trim the trim hat on the stick like the Cirrus, but the motor was significantly more smooth and not hyper sensitive like in the Cirrus.  The plane trims nice and easy and stays put.  Flying the plane takes nothing more than you finger and thumb and feels a lot like a Diamond DA40, very smooth.

We descended down into Roche Harbor and my first awkwardness of the flight took place.   I am pretty used to flying a Cirrus which has a much higher pattern speed, so when I entered the pattern, Nick was trying to get me to slow down.  It was just a totally different sight picture for me.  As we turned final, I felt way high and was still fast at 75 knots IAS and Nick told me to put the throttle to idle and point the nose down.   I am more used to a gradual approach to land, but in this case we were pointed down pretty steep and I was faster than needed to be (should be 65kts or lower).  We got over the fence, I flared and she set down with a little plop.  Nick said it was a good landing, however I felt it was a bit of a bump.  As it turned out this is normal and how it was designed so that when you are flying in the back country the plane plants to get you on the ground.  It wasn’t hard, just different than I’m used to.   If you keep a little power on, it will land nice and smoothly with little effort.  We taxied to park and headed to lunch.

This was my first time to Roche Harbor and man it is really cool!  This would be the perfect place to take a wife or significant other for a weekend getaway.  Landing at this private airport costs $10, but the walk to town is only about a block to the harbor.  You can also rent mopeds or little three wheeled vehicles too.  We walked down to a great little café on the harbor and had a great burger.  Unfortunately I forgot the name of the place and can’t find it on the Internet, but the food was really good.

After lunch we walked back up to the plane and departed for Arlington.  On the way back we climbed to 5500’ and I did some air work.  Turns, slow flight with turns, and power off stalls.  The plane was really docile and controllable.  Stalls were a non-event with an easy break, but no buffet.  After some air work we leveled off at 5500’ with very little wind we had the plane trimmed out to 24” of manifold pressure at 2500 RPMs and leaned to 11.6 GPH.   The plane was showing 133kts indicated, 149kts true and 154kts ground.  That’s pretty darn good for this configuration and would easily out run most certified aircraft on the market.

I fiddled some more with the Advanced glass which worked pretty well.  The symbology is a little different than what I’m used to, but it’s fairly intuitive.  This aircraft also had synthetic vision, which also worked really well and was pretty accurate.  The autopilot was the one thing that didn’t work so well, but it may have been that I couldn’t figure that one out and Nick was pretty new to the team as well and didn’t know it all that well yet either.  The MFD/PFD combo has a lot of utility, but the numerous buttons and knobs take some getting used to.  I think the system would be pretty decent with some time, but my choice would be the new Garmin G3x Touch with the Garmin autopilot and the GMC 305 control panel.  This new system gives you everything the G1000 does and more for a fraction of the cost.  

We got back to Arlington and did a couple of touch and goes and then called it a day.  My overall impressions of the aircraft are really good.  It’s an amazing airplane with serious utility and flexibility.   I have been a little apprehensive about the overall internal size, but it’s actually really wide and much bigger inside than you would think.  They say its four inches wider than a Cessna 182.  The bubble windows probably help too, but even with the two of us in it, we weren’t bumping arms or anything.  The seats are comfortable and the visibility is great out the front and down the sides.  The high wing makes looking out above very limited, but in a turn there are two windows above your head that allow you to look out.  Overall I think this plane is a serious contender for my future hanger and I think doing a Two Week to Taxi (TWTT) program is the way to go and a great experience as well.  Time will tell what route we go, but like I said, I’m really impressed with this aircraft.  I only wish I could get more time in it to get a better feel for it and some more flight time.

Flying to Friday Harbor

On 7 July I got to complete another bucket list item by flying to Friday Harbor in the great Pacific Northwest and this was also the first time my entire family got to fly since selling our Cirrus.  Friday Harbor (KFHR) is a really cool airport out in the Puget Sound area, not too far from the Canadian border.  KFHR is located on San Juan Island about 60 NM northwest of Seattle, WA.  There is nothing really challenging about this airport, other than it can be pretty busy with all sorts of GA traffic (singles, twins, turbines, and some jets), but the view to fly here is amazing.  Once you land, there is a nice parking ramp on the northeast side of the airport for transient parking.  It is free if you are not overnight and the walk to town is relatively short, but keep in mind that it is up hill on the way back.  Friday Harbor is a popular get away spot and has numerous restaurants and café’s to eat at and also lots of bed and breakfast type places.  There is also a large harbor here and it’s fun to come down and watch the ferries and floatplanes come and go.  This is a very scenic area to visit and if you are looking for a fun weekend getaway, I highly recommend it.

Two very cool completely refurbished DeHavilland Beaver turboprops

Lots of seaplanes come and go.  The white one is Kenmore Air.

Gorgeous Beaver!  I would love to fly one someday.

Flying in Hawaii

As part of my bucket list of flying in all 50 states, I took the opportunity to check off another state, a hard one, while on a business trip in Hawaii.  As I’m sure it is obvious by now that I am a huge Cirrus fan, it only seemed fitting to find a Cirrus to rent in Hawaii.  This is not an easy task since there are very few of them in Hawaii and there aren’t any for rent.  I had posted a note on the COPA forums and got a suggestion to fly with Maui Flight Academy since they have a Cirrus to do training in.  I started exchanging e-mails with Laurence Balter the owner and instructor at Maui Flight Academy a couple months ago and I started to formulate a plan to accomplish this task on one of my upcoming trips.

While on a TDY trip in Australia, my travel plans changed and I had to leave early for my follow-on trip to Hawaii, which got me to the island a few days early and with time to kill.  Since it just so happened to be Fathers Day, I thought “why not go do something fun since I can’t be with my family”, so I contacted Laurence and he was very accommodating to meet my requirements.  He was able to work me into his day since he had clients that put them on Lanai for a couple hours of site seeing and lunch.  On the morning of 15 June, I hopped on an Island Air ATR-72 and took a short 30 minute flight from Honolulu to Lanai to link up with Laurence. 

I linked up with Laurence and we headed out to his Cirrus, a 2007 SR22G3.  What was comical about his plane was the tail number N779LB, which is pretty darn close our past aircraft N779WC.  Climbing into this plane felt like coming home.  I had been flying a 2009 SR20G3 with Perspective, but I never feel that comfortable in it like I did my Avidyne equipped aircraft.  We started it up and I taxied to RW21 and took off.  We departed to the east and around the coastline of Lanai and then proceeded north to Molokai.  We intercepted the coast and then proceeded to follow it to the northeast.  The area was gorgeous, especially Molokai, and for you movie buffs you may know that the opening scenes of Jurassic Park as they fly toward the island.  We made our way close to the coastline by several waterfalls and then by the old Belgian missionary Saint Damien founded in 1873.  Then we proceeded farther west over the Kauhako Crater Pond  - a small yet 800-foot deep pond.  From here we flew out over Kahiu Point light house and circled around for a touch and go at Kalaupapa Airport (PHLU) on RW5.  Kalaupapa is also the airport for the last “leprosy” colony that has had more than 8000 residence over the years.  The remaining few have since been cured.  After this we circled back around and followed the coast to the West and then cut across the island just east of Molokai (PHMK) and headed back to Lanai where I landed on RW 3.

Kauhako Crater Pond 

Kahiu Point light house and Kalaupapa Airport (PHLU) 

Flying this Cirrus was totally comfortable as if I had been flying my old plane non-stop for the past year.  It was really as if I hadn’t ever sold it.  It was a great experience to get back in the left seat of an SR22 again and the scenery was amazing.  Laurence was awesome and was a great tour guide.  He said my skills didn’t show any degradation and made his “instruction” more of a joy ride for him. 

Although the plane is based out of Maui, Laurence is very accommodating to link together other flights to help make travel work out.  He can also ferry the plane to Oahu if needed, but additional costs may be incurred.  If you are looking for a great way to see the islands, I highly recommend giving Laurence a call.  Check out his website at www.mauiflightacademy.com.

My approximate flight path (via Foreflight)

VFR around Seattle

I got up again in N941SR yesterday for a little VFR work.  I have flown this SR20 G3 several times now and it always feels good to get back in a Cirrus.  So I decided my flight would be a round robin (or around Seattle) kind of day.  My focus was VFR flying, avionics work and some touch and go practice.  I also wanted to use this opportunity to explore the area some more and get more comfortable with the tricky airspace around Seattle.  I departed to the south out of Renton (KRNT) and flew over to Crest Airpark (S36), which is a neat little airstrip surrounded by tall trees.  This makes for a fun and scenic approach and I had never been there, so I thought why not.  Next I went over to Pierce County (KPLU) and then flew all around the Rainier MOA complex to get to Olympia (KOLM).  I flew around to the north to came back and landed on RW17 then departed right traffic to the NW over to Sanderson (KSHN).  After another touch and go, I came back towards KOLM and asked for a visual ILS to 17 and let the “highway in the sky” guide me down the ILS.  This feature and the fact that the runways show up on the PFDs synthetic vision are pretty cool and make hand flying pretty easy. 

The green boxes are the "highway in the sky"

Once I completed the ILS, I took left traffic and flew over our old home in Lacey and then over our new home to take some pictures.  I was low enough to text the wife and let her know I was coming and got a picture of her on the sidewalk. ;-)  

Hi Honey

From here I went to the north out over the sound, which was really scenic and did a touch and go at Tacoma Narrows (KTIW).  The approach into KTIW was fun since I got to fly right over Gig Harbor and also right by the Tacoma Narrow Bridge.  What a cool place!  After departing right traffic, it was due north with the intent of using the VFR corridor Seahawk Transition over Sea-Tac (KSEA) airport for a short trip home.  However KSEA tower was extremely busy and I couldn’t get in and didn’t want to clog up the frequency with my request, so I flew the scenic route to the north, by the downtown areas and the Space Needle and then came in over the East Channel Bridge and down the waterway arrival back to KRNT for a cool over the water approach to RW16. 

Downtown Seattle 

It was a fun and scenic 2.2 hours flying low in the bumps, but a great time.  I’m not a huge fan of flying low, but for my purposes it worked out well.

Plane impressions:

I will say that I’m not all that impressed with the Perspective avionics system on this plane.  I know that it is arguably a more “capable” system than the older Avidyne Integra system, but it far from being intuitive and it is quite frankly very cumbersome to use.  This makes me personally uneasy, when in the thick of things while flying; I have to fumble around to get it to do what I needed it to do.  The older Integra system may be like that at first, but I never felt as uncomfortable in that as I do in the Perspective system.  I’m sure with a little time in it, it will get better but for now I’m starting to think that the older system upgraded with GTN650s would be a far better (and cheaper) route to go in the future. 

This G3 was an early version of the Perspective and didn’t have the GFC700 autopilot.  Instead it had an STEC 55X, which was less integrated than in the Avidyne Integra system.  This unit stinks to say the least and it seems to always be behind the plane and behind the commands.  The STEC 55X worked ok in my SR22, but in this avionics package it is horrible and untrustworthy in rough air.  I had upgraded a DFC-90 in my SR22 and it was a 100 times better unit than the STEC 55X.  It is probably the best money spent to upgrade the Avidyne avionics system!

Other differences between the G2 and the G3 are the lack of rudder/aileron connect in the G3.  This I think is a good thing, but since I’m use to having it in my G2, I have to remind myself more to use my feet since I have gotten a little lazy.  Another difference I noticed is that the G3 is more trim sensitive than the G2.  It seems like every little power change, flap setting or what not had pretty significant trim adjustments.  My G2 didn’t have nearly the sensitivity issues the G3 does.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but requires some getting use to I guess.

I look forward to more flights in N941SR since I really like the plane.  Being it is an SR20, you definitely don’t have the horsepower of the SR22 to get you out of trouble, but it flies really nice and is safe and comfortable.