The goal of the fly-in to which Matthew kindly invited me was to visit the Britten-Norman subsidiary in Bembridge, which is in charge of the final assembly of all Cirrus aircraft for Europe. Don’t ask me why the workshop doing it is located on the Isle of Wight, but I’m sure that the logistic experts know what they do… So what is going on there ?

One of the complexity in building plastic aircraft is that the composite fuselages and wings are not that easy to work with. Cirrus delivers fuselages and wings separately, and they got “glued” together in Bembridge. The glueing process takes place at mollecular level, so once started, it can not be stopped.

No way to separate them, nor to reposition the wings if something is not well positioned – understand by the millimeter. We also had the chance to see the famous BRS balistic parachute, about which I will say more later on. The parachute is folded in a separated space, behing the luggage compartment. When the pilot (or a passenger) activates it, it is pulled outside (and through) the fuselage by a rocket (the red cylinder on the photos below). It then unfolds progressively, to avoid a brutal deceleration.

Deploying the parachute is not an easy thing to do. To say it differently, it’s not something that can be done accidently. One must first remove a cache (picture on the left above), then rotate the handle down to bring it out of its hole. The next step is to pull the lever to extend it, by approximately 40 centimeters. The parachute will extend only once the now very long handle will be pulled towards the plane’s floor, which requires a force equivalent to 20 kilograms. There is absolutely no chance at all to do all of that accidentally.

Visiting the place where the Cirrus aircraft actually come to life and get tested was an interesting experience. But the best part of it was at the far end of the hangar… The team was finishing a Cirrus Perspective. Just in case you missed it, this is the next version, integrating the Garmin 1000 glass cockpit, with a new auto-pilot, offering the famous “recovery” button, which can bring the airplane back to wings-level attitude from up to 70° of bank and 50° of pitch. The plane was waiting for us, connected to an external power supply, so we could play with the new avionics.

I immediately felt home, and also appreciated the addition of a keyboard. If you ever filed a flignt plan in a GNS 430 / 530 or G1000, you know how much time can be spent rotating and pressing knobs. The keyboard was definetly missing, and the space on the center pedestal – where the GNS430s are on Avidyne Cirrus – has been re-allocated to the keyboard, the autopilot, and the audiobox. The autopilot has more modes than what light aircraft pilots are used to: Vertical Speed, Vertical Navigation (VNV), and Indicated Air Speed. I particularly like the IAS mode, which somehow transforms the throttle into an vertical speed controller. The autopilot simply maintains the airspeed. More power will make it climb, more power will lower the nose. You want to change flight level smootly ? Switch more to IAS, and push the throttle forward – how good is that ? If I were in position to buy a Cirrus today, I would certainly take this new version. Click here to read why I perfer the G1000 to the Avidyne Entegra.

On our way to the paint shop, we passed by a Cirrus G3 on a parking, and I could not resist the temptation to take the classical picture of the propeller spinner.