The G6, like previous the SR22, has room for five people. They just so happen to be rich and famous themselves now too, thanks to a string of hit songs, and are no longer trying to stick it to the man. Ironically, Good Charlotte’s members today are grown men with families who admit to using aviation to its full advantage to see their kids more often while on tour. One of the songs that came on was Good Charlotte’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” a single infused with punk-pop tempos and heavily steeped in class envy (the song’s lyrics advocate robbing the mansions of the wealthy). Our headsets filled with dance-rock anthems that served as an energizing complement to the dazzling cumuliform vistas unfolding before us. I concurred and she called up SiriusXM’s Pop2K channel. “It’s time for some tunes, don’t you think?” Ivy suddenly suggested. Our reward for cinching down our seat belts over South Carolina and parts of Georgia was the opportunity to break out into glorious skies for some cloud surfing as we skipped in and out of the tops of wispy vapor against a sky ablaze in the Day-Glo kaleidoscope of the late-afternoon sun. Subtle cockpit changes add up to major improvements: Jim Koepnick We could see that our course would take us quickly through the weather and rode out the bumps secure in the knowledge that the conditions the rest of the way to Miami would be much improved. Here again, the animated Nexrad imagery available in Perspective+ came in handy as we flew through green areas of precipitation on the map into yellow with heavier rain and turbulence. Our next leg after lunch would take us through the worst of the rain into Florida. What stood out to me was the animated Nexrad radar images on the SiriusXM weather depiction that showed the movement of the storm cells and convinced me that landing to the east on Runway 9 was the prudent course of action despite the wind very slightly favoring an arrival from the opposite direction. To that point, I’d been enjoying exploring the new features of the Perspective+ avionics system, which is based on Garmin’s new G1000 NXi platform, but now I was about to gain my first inkling that the added technological capabilities really do warrant referring to this SR22 as a whole new generation.īecause of its greatly increased computing horsepower, Perspective+ is 10 times faster than the previous Perspective avionics in the G5 Cirrus, making enhanced capabilities possible. The conditions were predicted to remain crummy into the afternoon. The skies were clear until we reached Charleston, where a wide band of heavy rain slid across Georgia and South Carolina. Photos: SR22 G6 at Marathon Key Jim Koepnick ATC assigned us the Morristown Six Departure to join up with V1, the airbound equivalent of the East Coast’s Route 1, and follow it for roughly the next 600 nautical miles to Charleston Executive Airport (KJZI), where we’d refuel and grab lunch. The adventure started the morning before in the cold at my home field, Morristown Municipal Airport (KMMU) in New Jersey. By now the secret is out and the G6 is the talk of the Cirrus-owner community - but at that time flying the new model required stealth since it was among the most closely guarded secrets in all of general aviation.Īs we rode in the golf cart to retrieve our rental car from the sleepy airline terminal next door to the Marathon General Aviation FBO, I thought back to the journey that had brought us here. My introduction to the G6 SR22 included a half-dozen flights over the span of three days in mid-December. She set to work fitting wingtip covers over the telltale Whelen Engineering-designed LED light strips and strategically placing sun shades in the windscreen and side windows so that no one could peer inside and see the new Perspective+ avionics system with its qwerty-style keyboard and subtly altered buttonology. Painted in an attractive Athens blue and sterling gray paint scheme, it was different enough from a G5 SR22 that my traveling companion, Cirrus SR product-line manager Ivy McIver, went to great lengths to ensure no snooping eyes on the ramp could deduce that this was the new generation. FLYING exclusive offer: Unlimited access for Conklin&deDecker piston aircraft data.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |