Cessna TTx at a Glance

It has been more than a dozen years since the introduction of a new breed of airplanes — starting with Cirrus Aircraft’s SR20 and SR22. The Lancair Columbia joined the fray a few years later. These composite-construction, fixed-gear, high-powered speedsters boasted innovative design features and high-tech avionics. Today, these airplanes have become so much a part of the fabric of the general aviation fleet that it’s easy to forget that not too long ago they were the stuff of science fiction, or at least the futuristic-looking kit-built world.

It’s heartening to see that Cessna has not moved away from single-engine production over the past few years, as many feared might happen as business slowed during the economic downturn. Instead, the company has invested in the segment. After a production hiatus of almost two years, the TTx, which was newly recertified last summer, is back and not only ready to go but also ready to compete in the high-performance single-engine marketplace.

We flew a late preproduction model a couple of years ago and raved about the G2000 avionics system. Today the TTx is a mature product with a number of new capabilities. There’s also an increased payload, a flight into known icing-approved ice protection system, new standby instruments and a nicely upgraded interior.

Rebirth

The TTx started life as a Columbia, an airplane that was developed by a startup aircraft manufacturer and based on an early 1990s kitplane design by Lancair founder Lance Neibauer, the Lancair ES, a fixed-gear carbon fiber four-seater with a big engine. With the encouragement of the FAA’s various programs promoting the development of new certificated lightplanes, Neibauer created a company to do just that and based it in the central Oregon community of Bend. The airplane that emerged was the Columbia, a highly refined development of the ES. The company was beset by financial woes — certifying an airplane is a staggeringly expensive proposition — and by 2008, it declared bankruptcy. Cessna bought the program and worked to weave the airplane, which it renamed the Cessna 350 and 400 and later the Corvalis, into the Cessna family while continuing production in the Bend facility. The Oregon adventure was short-lived, however. Following the economic downturn of 2008, Cessna was forced to close the Bend plant and relocate manufacturing to Wichita, Kansas, and then to Mexico.

In late 2010 on an FAA acceptance flight, a section of one wing debonded in flight. No one was hurt, but the event led to the shutdown of Corvalis production, a big fine from the FAA and a complete redesign of the plane and its manufacturing processes.

New Certification, New Airplane

It wasn’t until last summer that the airplane, now known as the Cessna TTx, emerged from a recertification program complete with a new designation, the T240. The redesign cut weight from the airplane by optimizing the composite construction methods and re-engineering numerous airframe components to make the TTx lighter and stronger — the holy grail of aviation engineering — than its predecessor. The TTx’s carrying capability rose accordingly, giving it a useful load in excess of 1,000 pounds for the first time. With 92 gallons (552 pounds), that means a full fuel payload of around 450 pounds, enough for a couple of 200 pounders and bags or three lighter occupants. When filled to the tabs, the TTx, like its competitors, becomes a true four-place airplane.

One of the TTx’s main attractions is it is an undeniably sexy airplane. It always has been, but today’s model is even hotter thanks to Cessna’s focus on enhancing every element. As you approach the airplane on the ramp, this is apparent, but the source of the appeal might be a mystery. The answer is the new TTx is painted just like in the olden days. The paint adds a degree of class and style to the airplane, even while admittedly cutting down on customizing options. Therefore, it is a good thing Cessna’s current paint schemes are so pleasing and classic, especially when compared with the Corvalis models that graced our covers in years past, including a neon-lime green example and a yellow-and-black-striped demo model, which inspired a number of letters to the editor critical of the schemes.

Climbing in, you get the second treat, a completely redesigned and restyled interior. The interior of the airplane I flew for this story was tan with contrasted stitching and leather accents throughout. It’s a big improvement on an already great interior. The redesign accomplished one other thing I applaud: It replaced the big wooden fuel selector knob on the console with a metal one. Though it’s been a trademark since the Lancair days, I’ve always thought the wooden selector was out of place in such a modern wonder and looked like something from the local boat shop. This sounds like a bit of a rant, but it underscores the fact that Cessna left no component unturned in its quest to update the TTx.

The panel too is brand-new, and it is a remarkably clean and well thought out place to do the business of flying. The selection of the Garmin G2000 helped a great deal in eliminating boxes and switches, but Cessna didn’t stop there. The panel includes as standard the brilliant L3 Trilogy backup instrument, so your backups in the TTx are numerous, independently powered and rely on different software engineering, which all adds to the redundancy of the electronics. It is the best lightplane panel in the industry.

Sliding In, Heading Out

I flew the TTx with Cessna demo pilot Dave Richardson on an ideal, cold and dry day out of Cessna’s single-engine building at its Wichita Mid-Continent Airport (KICT) campus. The TTx makes a pretty picture on the ramp. Indeed, it looked as though some big shot had flown it in from hundreds of miles away for an important same-day meeting with business associates, a mission the TTx is tailor-made for. The light-colored interior is roomy and gives the impression it is bigger than it is. The seats are situated snugly in the cabin, and the controls to adjust them are identifiable by touch, a necessity due to the tight fit of the doors to the side and the console in between the pilots. The G2000 touch controller frees up space with its all-in-one goodness, and the side sticks bring additional breathing space, as there’s no conventional yoke intruding. The seats are low-slung, so Cessna provides custom cushions to elevate pilots who aren’t as tall as others. Since I played point guard in high school, compared to Richardson, who at 6 feet, 5 inches would have played center, I needed the view afforded by the extra padding. It’s not an ideal solution, but it’s one that makes it easier to meet high G force requirements for modern seats.

Richardson ran through the checklist with me for the pre-start and start sequences. One item includes inflatable door seals, a feature that seems odd in a single-engine airplane (though it’s not the first to have the seals) but quickly makes its value known. The interior is pretty quiet, if you can use that word for a single-engine airplane with a 310 hp engine a few feet in front of your nose.

Taxi is accomplished with differential braking, a method that has become so common it’s hard to remember that not too long ago it was mostly kitplanes and oddballs that used the brakes to taxi. Suffice it to say, the TTx taxies easily and can turn within its own wingspan.

As is the norm, we were light for our flight with 65 gallons on board and no TKS installed — no one ever tops it off to take a journalist flying. Richardson had no need to bother, though. Going out of KICT with the temperature barely in the double digits on the Fahrenheit scale and a stiff breeze on the nose, we were off and out of there, scarcely taking 1,000 feet to hit a rotation speed of 70 knots and then climbing at best angle at nearly 2,000 fpm. We hit 400 feet and made the tower-requested turn before we ran out of runway below us.

Richardson knew I was familiar with the flying qualities of the TTx — nothing aerodynamically has changed on the airplane. So we spent our time heading out to lunch at one of the best airport restaurants around, Enrique’s in Ponca City, Oklahoma, which serves excellent Mexican cuisine. I had the gorditas. Highly recommended.

Performance and Safety

We wanted to play around VFR, so we headed up to 13,500 feet and were seeing 210 knots true — a typical cruise speed, Richardson says — at around 17 gph at 50 degrees lean of peak. At that altitude, the TTx is considerably faster than the SR22, though the Cessna I was flying was not outfitted with TKS panels, which normally steal a few knots in drag. That, coupled with our light weight — we were a few hundred pounds below max takeoff weight — combined to put the estimated speed difference at around 10 knots, not an insignificant advantage of the Cessna and one pretty much confirmed by the books. Up into the flight levels, you can see speeds into the mid-220s or higher, according to the book, though I’ve never coaxed a TTx to its top published speed of 235 knots. Regardless, it is a smoking-fast airplane.

In addition to high-speed capabilities, we wanted to check out the airplane’s slow-speed manners, which I know from prior experience are very docile. In this case, we did it by intentionally engaging the airplane’s ESP envelope protection mode, a function of the G2000 avionics package. In a climb with the autopilot engaged and the throttle pulled way back, the system would intervene at 80 knots and lower the nose to maintain that airspeed. The result is a hands-off controlled descent. ESP also has overbanking control, hypoxia descent mode and overspeed protection, all fantastic safety advances.

One huge advance is the TTx’s ability to fly the missed approach completely coupled, a rare capability in a GA airplane, let alone a light single-engine model. We tried it out at Stillwater, Oklahoma, flying the south approach down to minimums and then going missed. You apply full throttle, lose a notch of flaps, check that the gear is indeed permanently down and clean up that last notch while you monitor the GFC 700 as it flies the procedure, including the vertical nav part. Considering the workload and potential stress during the missed approach phase, a fully coupled miss (save autothrottles, that is) is a great safety bonus.

I’ve written about G2000 before, but every time I fly it, I get to see new capabilities. The G2000 represents a quantum leap in avionics design. G2000 does everything differently, and by that I mean it does most everything. By integrating all of the functions of navcoms, transponders, audio panels and other system controllers, such as the environmental controls, it eliminates the need for those other federated boxes and their attendant switches, buttons, dials, knobs, displays, and well, you get the idea. The G2000 is managed through a touch-screen controller, and in the case of the TTx, it’s mounted at the front of the console just below the panel. It’s easy to reach and to control, even in turbulence. With G2000, you get one controller for every “box,” instead of having multiples, which is still the case with all Garmin G1000 systems. Want to adjust the intercom settings? Go to the touch-screen controller. The temperature in the cockpit? Touch-screen controller. Monitor systems status? You got it. It’s one-stop shopping for airplane management.

G2000 has the added advantage of being easy to learn. If you’re familiar with any G1000 system, all you need to do is spend a little time with the new touch-controlled version to get the hang of it. There are a few new ways to do things, like swapping frequencies and configuring the audio, but all of them require less head-down time, less inputting of data and fewer “button” pushes. G2000 is a huge advance in GA avionics and a strong selling point for the TTx.

We missed the approach to Stillwater that day and headed to Ponca City for lunch and then back to KICT. I love the TTx’s stability as an instrument platform. I hand-flew a practice ILS — the nearest cloud was in Ohio — keeping things centered with synthetic vision on the big PFD.

With its relaunch, recertification and extensive reworking, the Cessna TTx is in a more competitive place than it has arguably ever been. It’s the fastest in its class, has the best avionics, boasts a number of highly desirable safety features and has terrific ramp appeal. In many ways, the dream that was the ES two decades ago is finally coming to fruition in the form of a fast, comfortable and technically advanced carbon fiber marvel called the TTx.

View photo of the Cessna TTx in our photo gallery here.

Or check out how the TTx stacks up against some of its competitors here.

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The post We Fly: Cessna TTx appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

So when the Wichita, Kansas, icon tooled up to build a couple of next-generation larger cabin models, the question I had was this: How does this paragon of plain-sense manufacturing build new Citations that embody the best of the company’s traditional strengths in addition to the latest innovations in propulsion, avionics, aerodynamics and cabin design?

How they did it is kind of a long story. What they came up with isn’t. It’s called the Latitude.

Cessna Citation Latitude at a Glance

Launching

For the last few months I’d been itching to go flying in the Latitude, the first of a new generation of Cessnas that at this point includes just one other member, the emerging Citation Longitude. (To keep them straight, I just remember that the “Long”itude has a “long”er range.) Cessna’s flight test program was in full swing, so wresting a flying example from the flight test engineers’ busy slide rules for a couple of hours of atmospheric fun was no easy feat. It finally happened, though, and the flight was amazing.

Some might dismiss the Latitude as a slightly scaled down version of the Sovereign+, but there’s a lot more to it than that. True, the Latitude is certificated under an amendment to the Sovereign Model 680 type certificate, and the airplane shares many design features, components and philosophies with the Sovereign line. To wit, pilots with a Cessna model 680 type rating will need only differences training to fly the Latitude.

The story of the Latitude is proven technology seamlessly meeting high-tech enhancements. The idea was to take the best features of the Sovereign+, improve upon the cabin and avionics, and do it without tackling high-risk new features, like new wings (the Latitude’s is essentially identical to the Sovereign+ wing), tail or, gulp, flight control systems.

Still, there’s a lot that’s new in the Latitude, some of it verging on revolutionary by midsize standards. As with every bizjet we’ve ever flown, the best seats in the house are up front (though we’ll admit we’re biased in favor of seats with flight ­controls as part of the package — that’s true first class). In the case of the Latitude, the cabin is a revelation. Like Embraer, the one competing manufacturer with a true midsize jet, Cessna realized that if it wanted to compete in this new world of high-flying expectations, it had to create a jet with a cabin that passengers more than just put up with; they had to adore it. Target hit.

Cessna started out with a short list of goals consistent with the company’s Citation DNA while pushing into realms of technology and comfort that went beyond any plane that had worn Cessna colors before. The tried-and-true included — and this is not hyperbole — legendary reliability, serviceability, industry-leading runway performance with super-slow approach speeds, low operating costs and a really competitive purchase price. To achieve these things, Cessna designers gave the new model an all-metal design with the moderately swept Sovereign wing for great hand-flying manners and a perfect blend of solid cruise performance and head-scratchingly low approach speeds.

The Latitude features good, old-fashioned “fly-by-wire” flight controls, in that the ailerons, rudder and elevator are controlled by physical “wires,” namely unpowered (not hydraulic) cables and push rods. It’s a simple, proven and robust system. To give the Latitude consistent control feel throughout its large speed envelope — Mach 0.80 to just over 80 knots — there’s a mechanical linkage system that adjusts aileron power to be roughly the same even at higher speeds, so pilots don’t have to use mucho muscle power to maneuver at altitude, where the energetic airflow provides lots of natural control resistance.

Assisting in flight control is a smart, hydraulically powered spoiler system with five spoilers per side. These serve as a multifunction lift and control management system. Three spoilers on each wing augment aileron operation, and all of them act as inflight speedbrakes and lift dump devices after landing. While it’s transparent to the pilots, the pilot and copilot controls are hooked up to different roll controls — the pilot’s yoke handles the ailerons and the copilot’s the spoilers. There’s a disconnect control that can be activated to split the systems, allowing the airplane to be flown by ailerons or spoilers alone, providing a clever form of redundancy in the unlikely event that something should break.

Another design decision that kept the program risk low was sticking with the same engines as on the Sovereign, the rugged, reliable, efficient and proven Pratt & Whitney PW306D1. Incorporating full-­authority digital engine control (fadec) for easy operation and maximum efficiency, the high-bypass turbofan engines put out 5,760 pounds of thrust apiece, while regulating the ratio of exhaust gases with bypass air to lower emissions and noise.

Cessna’s aerodynamicists had the additional luxury of using the magic that is the Sovereign+ wing, which does it all, providing an MMO of Mach 0.80 to go along with VREFs hovering right around 100 knots. Big Fowler flaps provide plenty of slowdown power, both providing drag and increasing the wing area substantially when fully extended. The Latitude doesn’t have winglets but rather little “swooplets,” as on the Sovereign+. These subtly upturned tips look for all the world like cosmetic flourishes, but Cessna says they do more good at less cost than big winglets, which can add weight while requiring additional supporting wing structure to boot.

To understand the Latitude’s cabin appeal, you need to start from the ground up — well, the floor up anyway. The Latitude has a true flat floor and the widest and tallest Citation cabin ever. At 6 feet in height and a super-wide 77 inches across, the space goes beyond other Citations for those reasons alone. Cessna went further, designing the windows to be large and spaced perfectly to give every seat occupant a private view of the world slipping by below. The effect is a cabin that reminds me more of a large-cabin jet than a midsize model, an effect that will not be lost on potential customers.

Cabin styling, comfort, amenities and technology are all big upgrades over past true midsize models. The Latitude’s seats are what seem to be the ideal blend of minimal and comfortable, with enough structure to be substantial while sleek enough to not overwhelm (or take up excessive space). They are also highly adjustable, allowing the passenger to slide out toward the aisle (not the alley), and they rotate, recline, mold to one’s contours and even transform into a very sleep-friendly shape.

It’s hard to quantify quiet in the cabin, but it seemed really quiet, even when I slipped back during flight to check out the passengers’ chambers. Like newly updated Citations, the Latitude has Cessna’s Clarity Wireless cabin connectivity system through which passengers can enjoy music or video and control lighting and temperature. With Clarity passengers can play music (or a selected movie’s soundtrack) through the cabin speakers. Inside a jet screaming through the skies at eight-tenths the speed of sound, I expected that soundscape to be tinny and challenged. It was, instead, deep, rich and encompassing. Hmm, I wondered, what would be my soundtrack to Hawaii?

Up Front

Like the Citation X+ and Sovereign+, the Latitude has Garmin’s new G5000 touch-screen avionics suite with autothrottles. The four touch-screen controllers allow the pilots to make inputs to the flight management system at easy arm’s reach. The touch-screen layout eliminates the big flight management keypad/displays on the console between the seats, so things seem far cleaner and less cluttered.

G5000, like Garmin’s other similar systems for light airplanes and smaller turbine models, is based on a user interface that’s a big improvement over the G1000 system that revolutionized general aviation but that can be a chore to learn and requires more button pushes to execute a task than one might like. Instead of using big FMS keypads to do the dirty work, pilots can touch the data into one of the touch-screen controllers (set up to work well even in turbulence) and see the magic happen.

Because the tube is bigger, the cockpit of the Latitude is also bigger than the Sovereign’s, which allows the seats to have more travel, to recline farther and to be more widely adjustable. The windscreens are larger too, and there’s interior light and more space along the sides and between the pilot seats. Even the temperature control is better. All in all, it’s a much nicer space for pilots than that of any other Citation.

Taking Latitude

We went out of Austin-Bergstrom International on a beautiful early spring day. We were pretty light, just 26,500 pounds, with myself in the left seat, program test flight head Aaron Tobias in the right and flight test engineer Steve Turner keeping an eye on things from the back.

Flight controls are conventional, with dual columns and a tiller on the pilot’s side. The tiller can swivel the airplane around on a nickel (much tighter than a dime), and you use it for most taxiing. For the takeoff roll, you need only the rudder pedals, which are adjustable with a little foot-operated lever that’s survived 25 years and numerous Citation models despite it being something of a tricky skill to master.

With a light load and a healthy headwind, we wouldn’t need much runway. With a rotation speed of 101 knots, we’d need just under 3,000 feet that day. After a CRJ touched down and cleared Runway 17L, big buildups providing a dramatic backdrop to the south, the tower gave us the go-ahead. Rounding the corner into position, we completed our lineup check, including one last look at the controls (including making sure the taxi control lock was off). I armed the autothrottles, pushed them up and watched them take it away.

Acceleration got my attention as the Pratts spun up to full power and we were off. After I rotated I called for gear up, and then flaps, and we climbed at 250 knots selected, a speed that gave us a rate of climb of around 3,000 fpm that day. We had flight-planned up to 43,000 feet — the plane’s ceiling is 45,000 feet — with only a couple level-offs on our way there. The Latitude can climb directly to FL 430 in 24 minutes.

I hand-flew the airplane up through FL 250. It felt like other larger Citations, a solid, predictably handling plane that asks for steady trimming to minimize control forces. Compared with a fly-by-wire model, it’s work, though with time any proficient pilot would come to feel at one with the plane. With the larger windscreens, the visibility is very good, though I found I liked my seat a little higher than the sight gauge suggested I set it. At FL 430 we were getting book value for our weight and the temperature, a true airspeed of 432 knots while burning 1,460 pounds of fuel per hour.

As I said, technology is nicely integrated, even up front. While up at altitude I tried out the Iridium phone through the headsets. It worked great. I even texted the office that I would be in late, because I was out flying, so please hold my calls.

The controllers, as is not always the case, were accommodating, letting us loiter at FL 430 for a while and then clearing us back to Austin via the usual north arrival procedure with step-down altitudes, speeds and crossing restrictions part of the process, all of which the G5000 FMS can handle automatically. On descent — we were cleared into Austin via the Sewzy One arrival — we let the autothrottles handle the speeds, keeping the value just below the “barber pole,” so you get best performance without hazarding the alarm bells of drifting into the loud land of the red-and-white dashed lines. The autothrottles are a great addition to the Latitude, as they are to the Sovereign+ and X+, because they bring a world of sophistication to the midsize segment that makes flying safer, easier and more economical.

Below FL 180 we canceled IFR, and then I tried my hand at steep turns — I’m glad it wasn’t a check ride — and checked out the autothrottle ­underspeed protection feature. Forget to add in power when you need it, and the system does it for you. But don’t forget. I also worked to wrap my head around the VREF speeds I’d be looking at on approach, as we configured the plane for landing and I took in the strange view of flying a 30,000-plus-pound max gross airplane at 100 knots and it feeling nothing but solid.

Once back with Austin Approach, I flew the ILS for 17L, keeping an eye open for the traffic, a gaudily painted Southwest 737 on final for the parallel, 17R, in the hazy convective light of the Texas afternoon. The first shot was a normal approach — VREF was 100 knots — and full-stop landing. The big brakes on the Latitude are remarkable; even as a newbie to 680 flying, I got the airplane down and stopped at very close to book value, which was just under 3,000 feet.

I taxied back out for a second circuit, this time with a V1 cut to a single-­engine pattern and landing. There was plenty of power, and my approach on one engine was only marginally worse than with two. After touchdown, I powered both mills back up and headed up again, to a third full-stop landing that, while not perfect, was my best of the day. I like it when it works out that way.

In the Latitude, Cessna brings to the table the qualities — reliability, serviceability, performance and cost certainty — that longtime Citation operators value, while adding in levels of comfort, safety and efficiency that only an investment in innovation can bring. The Latitude represents a near perfect blend of those two worlds.

For more, read about the Citation Latitude’s competition in the shrinking midsize jet world here.

Or see more of the Citation Latitude in our photo gallery here.

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The post We Fly: Cessna Citation Latitude appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Clearly, I hadn’t wished for enough. The next day I’d be flying a CJ with next-gen avionics, stuff that very few pilots have seen, much less flown.

Cessna Citation M2 at a Glance

What’s an M2?

The launch of Cessna’s Citation M2 by then-new CEO Scott Ernest to a group of journalists at the company’s headquarters in Wichita last year was, for lack of a better word, interesting. Until we arrived on site that day, none of us knew exactly what M2 was or how it fit in with Cessna’s traditional lineup of light jets.

As it turned out, M2 was intended, as one might assume, to sound as if it’s the next logical step after the entry-level Model 510 Mustang, but it wasn’t a Mustang at all. It was in reality a Model 525 CitationJet or “CJ.”

Early on in the M2 program, the folks at Cessna seemed to want to refer to M2 as a new model instead of a new version of the CJ. This surprised me, as CitationJet is one of the best brands in aviation.

The more I thought about it, however, the more the strategy made sense. After all, Mustang pilots are passionate about their planes and rightly so. Cessna was simply seeking to capitalize on that passion.

As with the original Citation introduced way back in the 1970s, Cessna was attempting to do what it did 20 years later with the CitationJet and 30 years later with the Mustang: create a new, lower-cost-of-admission entry-level jet.

The CitationJet program was launched in 1989 in the effort to introduce a light jet expressly designed for single-pilot operations that also boasted good performance and a comfortable cabin for a small airplane. The price was just under $3 million. It was a huge hit. Cessna has sold more than 400 Model 525s of different varieties since the CJ’s introduction.

The Mustang, which followed a decade later, came in at around that same price (though Cessna for a time sold it for $2.5 million). The Mustang, which Cessna began delivering in 2005, resonated strongly with owner-pilots. It was smaller, easier to fly and featured the Garmin G1000 flat-panel avionics system that many of the pilots stepping up to the Mustang had cut their teeth on in Cessna’s single-engine products.

The problem was the logical step-up airplane for them, the now-discontinued CJ1+, was a very different airplane: faster, more demanding of pilot performance and more bizjet-like up front. As straightforward as the CJ is, the transition seems daunting to some pilots stepping up from piston singles or twins, or even the Mustang. M2 is designed to address that gap by giving performance on top of easy-flying manners.

New Economics

The Citation, the CitationJet and even the Mustang were designed during periods when light jet sales were hot and it made sense to invest in new product development, even to create clean-sheet airplanes for promising markets. In each case, the gamble paid off. Today, with the light and midsize markets markedly off, the same cannot be said. So Cessna needed to come up with a “new” model that leveraged existing technology. And M2 was born.

Far from being the shortsighted shortcut that some critics might make it out to be, M2 seems to me to be a brilliant recasting of a great airframe with the latest quality-of-life upgrades. This is hardly the first time such a thing has been done, but the cleverness of the M2 program is striking. For the investment costs of a new avionics package, interior and performance upgrade, you get what is not only the new entry-level CJ but also the perfect step-up model for the hundreds of happy Mustang customers who are looking for something a little faster and roomier. You can see why I was so curious to fly it and see how it stacked up to the other CJs I’ve flown, which include ones from every phase in its history. Regardless, it was clear that previous models had set a high bar for Cessna to reach with its latest Model 525 CitationJet, the first with Garmin avionics.

Quality of Life

The improvements to M2 are modest in scope but impressive in their effect. Though I have flown a number of different CJs and have a couple of dozen hours in a CJ1+, M2 seems for all the world like a different airplane, at least once you get inside.

On the outside, you can tell instantly that it’s an M2 and not a straight CJ thanks to the new wingtip extensions that are too subtle to be called “winglets.” Cessna refers to them instead as “swooplets,” a term we’re adding right now to Flying‘s electronic dictionary. Winglets improve lift by adding significantly to wingspan and wing area. More importantly perhaps, they greatly reduce the drag associated with the wasteful span-wise flow that normally spills over the wingtip. As far as swooplets are concerned, without conducting any thorough aerodynamic analysis, I’m going to say they are there largely for the sake of appearance. I still like them.

Inside M2 there are changes galore. Turn right upon entry through the classic CJ door, and you see the completely redesigned cabin. There are new seat appointments (the structure is the same; the comfort is much improved), a new entertainment/network system Cessna calls Clarity and beautifully redesigned features, including the lav (now with a hard door), food-storage area (calling it a galley is a stretch) and LED lighting throughout. The interior was redesigned by the same team that is working on Cessna’s two large-body models, the Latitude and larger Longitude, so the quality of the materials and workmanship in M2 is as good as you’ll see in Cessna’s in-development big-bucks bizjets.

Up front, the changes are even more evident. M2 is the first CJ to feature Garmin flat-panel avionics, in this case the G3000 system designed for light jets. G3000 is an evolution of the G1000-based system that comes standard in the Mustang and in all of Cessna’s current single-engine models. The magic behind G3000 is that it uses small touch screens to navigate the display system’s menus instead of bezel-mounted buttons or a stick cursor. The interface is user-friendly, with shallow menus, an easy-to-navigate home menu layout (if you’re ever lost, just go to the menu’s home) and big graphical icons to help you recognize the function without having to put on your reading specs.

I’d flown with a G2000, a close companion product to G3000, in a couple of different airplanes and loved it. For pilots familiar with G1000, G3000 will seem very familiar, though I found myself searching at first to figure out how to do simple things, like swap a radio frequency.

More often than not, I was trying too hard. Just touch the frequency you want on the controller, and boom, it’s there. G3000 also cleans up the cockpit a great deal compared to previous CJ avionics installations. Because a lot of the functions are housed in the integrated avionics suite, Cessna was able to eliminate many, though not all, of the knobs, buttons and switches that proliferate in any jet’s cockpit. M2 is still a serious airplane to fly. But with G3000 and full-authority digital engine control, the pilot workload is greatly reduced. In a single-pilot jet, that means a lot.

Other improvements to the cockpit are easier entry (thanks to a lowered console), greater seat travel rearward, greater recline thanks to an ingenious cutout that lets you recline back into what used to be a cabinet wall, and the elimination of the infamous rotary-test knob. You’ve also got a multifunction backup instrument on the glareshield, autopilot controls up there too (where they belong) and backup display controllers in the highly unlikely event that the touch screens go out.

M2 is supposed to be a 400-knot airplane, compared to 380 knots for the CJ1+, and I spent a while trying to figure out exactly how Cessna managed to get an extra 20 knots out of an airframe that, swooplets excepted, seemed identical to the previous generation of CJs. The answer, I was told, was simply that the new Williams power plants, with up to 1,965 pounds of thrust apiece, produce more power than the previous FJ44s. This accounts for much of the performance improvement in the new model.

Flying M2

The plan was for us to brief on the new airplane, hop in it, fly to Independence, Kansas, where M2 will be produced, tour the factory, hop back in, do some more flying and head back to Wichita in time for lunch. The plan alone was making me hungry.

My right-seat companion for the flight was Cessna engineering test pilot Pete Fisher, who walked me patiently through the procedures for the new model, including the checklists, which can now be largely completed using what software geeks might refer to as “wizards” on the Garmin panel that guide you through test steps — everything from fire-warning checks to stick shaker ­— without having the dreaded rotary-test switch, a round dial switch that served the same purpose as the new electronic preflight guide. The improved crew alerting system has messages for a number of warnings that formerly had dedicated lights in the panel. The effect is a panel that is a lot less cluttered, a lot better organized and a lot less demanding of the pilot’s attention, which should be focused on flying and less on the tedious art of switchology.

A big difference between the old and new CJs is that newer models are equipped with fadec, so the start sequence is greatly simplified as is engine management in general. On start, you get things spinning, introduce fuel and watch the numbers do what they do. Should something go awry, which is unlikely, the system takes care of itself, something it can do much faster and better than any human.

It was hot in Wichita that July day, just over 100 degrees, and as I plugged the numbers into the G3000, I was surprised at what good performance, including incredibly impressive runway performance, it still predicted for us despite the high density altitude.

As I taxied the airplane out of the busy Cessna experimental test ramp — no, I can’t tell you what I saw there, but it was very cool — and toward the runway, everything about M2 seemed like classic CJ. I will admit that I was thrilled that instead of a little paper card onto which I’d scribbled our V speeds, the G3000 had them displayed numerically and graphically.

We were cleared, I made sure everyone was ready to go, and I made one last check and advanced the power levers for takeoff ­— literally, for “takeoff,” which is one of the lever presets. Instead of having to set power by the numbers, which I always thought was crazy for a single pilot flying a jet, you simply push the throttles full forward and get ready to go flying.

M2 accelerated as only a light jet with a light load and fairly big engines can do, and before I knew it, we were V1, at 104 knots, and then rotate at 105. We were flying, and I remembered once again how much I love this airplane. Gear up, flaps up, make the turn, go to departure, talk to you on the way back. I hand-flew the airplane on the way up, and it was in every respect a 525, that is to say, pleasing to fly, predictable and just responsive enough.

A couple of nice things that a modest addition of power have done for M2: First, its already short takeoff and landing distances are now even shorter. At max takeoff weight and standard conditions at sea level, M2 gets off the ground in just 3,250 feet. Getting it down is even more impressive. At max landing weight (which is just 800 pounds less than M2’s max takeoff weight of 10,700 pounds) the airplane requires just 2,640 feet of runway.

Second, more power equals better climbing ability. M2 can climb directly to 41,000 feet in around 24 minutes, figures that jibe with my flight, though we did not get the opportunity to climb directly to that altitude or to our final altitude of 34,000 feet, for that matter. For our initial climb (takeoff weight was 9,900 pounds) at 220 knots indicated, we were, however, seeing an impressive 2,700 fpm on the VSI, and that was on a very hot day, ISA+16.

Even once we were in the flight levels, the climbing power was still there. From FL260 up to FL340, M2 was climbing at better than 1,300 fpm, which is a good rate of climb. Of course, for a jet this means you get higher faster, save fuel and extend range. When it comes to just about everything with jets, higher is better.

At 34,000 feet and ISA+11, an altitude — though not temperature — where M2 should get its best speed, it did indeed. At 920 pounds per hour total (around 135 gph per side) we were seeing 401 knots. We didn’t venture up to 41,000 feet that day, but Fisher told me the fuel flow typically goes way down, to 700 pph total (around 50 gallons per side, so barely more than a third of the fuel burn at FL340) for a slight penalty in airspeed.

Coming into Independence, a short hop for us in the CJ, I used the hydraulic speed brakes, which you can extend at any speed, though they retract automatically when either engine is at high thrust to guard against accidently leaving speed brakes deployed when they’re the last thing you need.

The tower directed us to a left base for Runway 35 and cleared us to land. The CJ has four notches of flaps, though the last one, which is 60 degrees, is for lift dump only and can only be selected when you’re on the ground. With a 5,500-foot runway and a long drive away from any airline airport, Independence is a perfect example of the ideal destination for a CJ (or just about any bizjet, for that matter). Again, the CJ was a CJ, and the pattern and landing were exactly what I’d expected. I made my best landing of the day, and we taxied in.

After one of the best factory tours I’ve ever had thanks to the hospitality of Lily English, the general manager of Cessna’s Indy manufacturing plant, we hopped back into M2 and made our way back to Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, taking the long way, spending time doing air work, steep turns, slow flight, stalls and the like. Again, it was great to get reacquainted with the 525. As should be the case for an entry-level, single-pilot jet intended for owner-flown operations, the CJ exhibits docile handling, even at high altitudes. A stick shaker keeps you alerted to any unintended stalls, and the Williams engines provide enough motive force to turn such an event into a quick and easy climb.

Parting Impressions

As I’d suspected, M2 left me speechless. I know Cessna wasn’t redoing the 525 just for me, but they might as well have been. They took a tried-and-true performer, gave it a bit more power, remarkably easy-to-use avionics that cut down on workload and complexity, and a refined cabin that is sure to please the people in back. I wish I’d been able to fly it back home.

At right around $4.4 million, M2 is well-positioned, but it will face some stiff competition from two chief rivals: the still in-development HondaJet and the Embraer Phenom 100. In terms of performance, price and refinement, M2 stacks up well against the two formidable entry-level jets.

As usual, one of the advantages M2 has over its competitors is Cessna’s remarkable service center network, which seems to only get stronger as time passes. Moreover, there’s really very little in the form of potential surprises for owners.

In many ways, that’s what the CitationJet has always been about, giving owner-pilots an airplane that does exactly what they expect it to do with great economy and dependability. Only now it’s doing it with a great new cockpit and a wonderful new cabin, a combination of attributes Cessna says has created a tremendous level of interest in the new jet, which comes as no surprise to us.

The post We Fly: Cessna Citation M2 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Gulfstream G650 at a Glance

It had been a good morning, something for which I was ready but which nothing could have sufficiently prepared me. It had all started with what sounded like a softball question.

A few hours earlier I had been sitting in a briefing room with some friends from Gulfstream, having coffee, chatting and getting ready to discuss the airplane I’d soon be flying, the Gulfstream G650, the fastest production airplane in the world. Between sips of java, Gulfstream flight engineering pilot Tom Horne asked me, seemingly just off the cuff, to name the best-flying airplane I’d ever flown.

In my line of work, I have a few hours in a lot of different airplanes and a lot of time in a few, and to be honest my mental list of great fliers includes more than a couple of oddballs. I threw out an airplane I figured Tom would know well, the Extra 300. He did know it. Then he asked what I liked about it, to which I replied that it gave you exactly what you asked for every time, and if you got something different, it was only because you didn’t know how to ask correctly. He smiled. “Remember that answer,” he said.

An All-New Airplane

As proud as they are of their current jets and as much as they love to discuss them in great detail, employees at Gulfstream Aerospace get used to not talking about other projects that are in development. Because big jet programs take up to a decade to progress from first concept to first delivery, for a company like Gulfstream there always has to be something in the pipeline that isn’t ready for public release. For many years, that unspoken project was the Gulfstream G650.

Gulfstream began discussing the new jet publicly in 2008. By then the company had been working on it for five years. It wasn’t entirely secret, I should add. Gulfstream had not only discussed the 650 with its customers ahead of time, it had relied in large part on its customers to define the new airplane. After all, why should a company build an airplane its customers might or might not want when it could simply ask them exactly what they want and then build that product? The group they assembled, called the Advanced Technical Customer Advisory Team (ATCAT), would come to be intimately involved in the design process.

Of course, the problem with that approach is customers for products as expensive as the Gulfstream G650 are seldom shy about asking for what they want. And they weren’t shy. What they asked for was, to put it very simply, an airplane that was bigger than the very successful ultralong-range G550, that had even longer range, that was even faster, that was under 100,000 pounds (the cutoff weight for some important business aviation airports, including Teterboro), and that could operate out of all the same fields that Gulfstream’s other airplanes do.

To everyone’s amazement, Gulfstream granted every one of its customers’ wishes. The airplane they developed, the G650, is the biggest, fastest, most luxurious, longest-­range and most technologically advanced jet — by far — that Gulfstream has ever built. And they did it all on schedule while developing the brand-new super-midsize G280 at the same time. To say that Gulfstream is on a roll is an understatement.

Manufacturing Philosophy

For Gulfstream the G650 represented not only a new airplane design but a new way of building airplanes. In addition to the impressive new plant at the Gulfstream campus in Savannah, Georgia, which is home to the G650, Gulfstream created a new and more efficient way of building airplanes — something that it was already great at doing.

The chief manufacturing innovation is the use of bonded skins to create a fuselage that’s better in a variety of ways. With bonding, it can be more optimally shaped (with an oval) for more comfortable seating areas — the G650 has the best Gulfstream cabin by far. Bonding also makes for a stronger structure that is able to easily withstand higher pressurization values, giving the G650 a remarkably low cabin altitude; at 45,000 feet on our test flight, the cabin altitude was a strikingly low 4,100 feet, or approximately half that of older-generation bizjets. The fuselage is also more cost effective to produce, so Gulfstream can actually build that better product more efficiently.

Anyone who doesn’t immediately understand that Gulfstream will leverage this new way of building airplanes into new products down the line doesn’t know Gulfstream. The investment in new technologies and facilities will continue to pay off.

G650 Design

Gulfstream chose to create its new design, the G650, very much in the Gulfstream mold by making it a modestly sized jet with a large, comfortable cabin and insisting on great runway performance.

All of these things describe the company’s former flagship, the G550. What makes the Gulfstream G650 different is that it’s a little (or in some cases, a lot) better at everything. It’s faster, has longer range and has a greatly improved cabin over the G550’s already fine seating area.

The question was, how would Gulfstream pull this off? The first necessity was an improved engine, and Gulfstream got that with the latest generation of Rolls-Royce turbofan, the BR725, which puts out nearly 17,000 pounds of thrust but with unprecedented efficiency.

The new wing was a key element too. Its simple (no leading-edge devices), clean (flap tracks contained within the structure of the wing) and efficient (variable geometry and next-gen winglets) yet capacious structure meant a fast wing with lots of room for fuel. The sweep is greater than on previous Gulfstreams too, with 36 degrees of sweep for great efficiency at high speeds. The long, deep chord Fowler flaps provide excellent approach speeds, while the powerful reversers of the Rolls engines and giant anti-skid brakes combine to cut landing distances substantially.

The first chance I had to ride in the Gulfstream G650 was on a hop from Luton, just north of London, to Geneva for the European business aviation show. I was frustrated not to be flying the G650, sure, but I had the rare opportunity to see how the folks in back enjoy the ride. A few things were clear right off the bat. The windows, which look nice from the outside, are truly amazing on the inside. They’re not big; they’re huge. They’re also bright and perfectly positioned, so every passenger with an individual seat has a window to call their own. I also loved being able, thanks to high-speed wireless Internet, to check out the Red Sox scores in flight, send emails back to the office and check my hotel reservation in Geneva. (What rue was that place on?) We were treated to a fabulous meal, including champagne and ice cream for dessert, in addition to the wonderful conversation with the folks from Gulfstream and my fellow aviation journalists (none of whom, it just so happened, were pilots too). The conversation is worthy of note. Cruising along at Mach .92 on our way to Switzerland we were still able to talk in normal conversational voices. It is the quietest cabin I’ve ever flown in, gliders included.

This is in large part due to the efforts of the dedicated Gulfstream acoustics lab, which worked diligently to find out exactly where every peep was coming from in the airplane and do something to quiet it. It paid off.

The cabin also makes use of what Gulfstream calls Cabin Essential design. The idea is that in an airplane that travels such great distances, the operation of such things as sinks, vents, Wi-Fi connections, seat adjustments and the like are critical to conducting the flight, so Gulfstream engineered the cabin so there’s a great deal of redundancy in every component. While that’s no guarantee that something won’t go wrong, it greatly reduces that possibility.

Performance

It’s clear that today the sophisticated customers of the most capable business aircraft are looking for great performance across the board, from low cabin altitudes to excellent climbing ability. But in today’s market, ultimately nothing trumps range.

So when members of Gulfstream’s customer advisory team asked for 7,000 nm of range, or roughly a 15 percent improvement from the already remarkable range of the then-current Gulfstream range leader, it was a tall order.

But Gulfstream did just that, delivering an airplane that can fly 7,000 nm with reserves and do it at around Mach .87 (an improvement over the promised Mach .85). No other bizjet comes close to those performance figures. That means that the G650 can pair an impressive number of cities that no other purpose-built bizjet can, including Washington, D.C., to Qatar in 11 hours and 40 minutes at Mach .88 and Teterboro to Moscow at .90.

It is important to think about all of the steps that such flights save. Instead of airports, security lines, changing planes and dedicating two days to such trips even on the nicest airline’s best first-class experience, the entire flight can literally be done in pretty much the flying time involved. Add in the great cabin experience, including fine dining — the galley in the G650 is unrivaled in its class — world-class connectivity and almost-as-good-as-home sleeping arrangements, and it is easy to see how the G650 essentially makes the entire world a day trip.

A High-Tech Wonder

The Gulfstream G650 design is ingenious in its clean, simple and efficient approach to speed and range, but it’s important to understand that this is arguably the most advanced business aircraft on the planet.

The most noteworthy example of this is the three-axis fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system on the G650.

The G650 is the first FBW airplane for Gulfstream, but I can pretty much guarantee you it won’t be the last. The advantages so far outweigh the disadvantages at this point, it’s hard to remember what the downsides are.

If you are not familiar with it (there are very few such airplanes in the GA fleet), fly-by-wire is a different way of giving pilots control of the airplane. As the name implies, instead of the pilot being on one side of a mechanical connection — think control cables or push tubes — between yoke and aileron, fly-by-wire controls simply allow the pilot to electronically command the flight path. With the G650 this gives not only extraordinarily smooth flying qualities but allows a range of flight control redundancies, so you can fly it with or without the primary flight control computer, depending on what kind of failure mode you find yourself in. With each of the backup modes, there are certain functions, such as autopilot or speed control, that are lost or less aggressively maintained. That said, the chance of a failure of the flight control system is hovering a fraction of a hair’s breadth above zero.

What fly-by-wire does is make the Gulfstream G650 behave the same regardless of the loading, so the crew isn’t flying one airplane at 70,000 pounds takeoff weight and a completely different-feeling one at 95,000 pounds. The control feeling is identical. Similar in design to the fly-by-wire systems in Boeing aircraft (the 777 and 787), the fly-by-wire computer in the G650 is a smart compromise between computer aiding and pilot control. The system helps provide a feel of finesse and precision that no human pilot could otherwise achieve, while protecting the flight without forcing the pilot to give up control in any normal flight regimen.

Flying the G650

As I mentioned earlier, it was a rainy summer day in Savannah with a nasty front in the offing when I showed up to learn about and fly the Gulfstream G650. My guide for the flight would be Tom Horne, with international captain Dave Smith acting as safety pilot. We had all checked the radar a few times before we showed up for the meeting, and we thought it best to go flying earlier in the day, when the weather looked at least flyable, rather than wait for some unknown circumstances in this fast-changing weather system.

Like other Gulfstreams, the G650 is equipped with the PlaneView cockpit, which in this case is based on Honeywell’s Primus Epic flight deck. I’d not only flown Gulfstreams with PlaneView before, but I’d flown a couple of other business jets with differently configured versions of Primus Epic. To be honest, I like them all. So I was familiar with it but certainly not proficient in its operation.

With the Gulfstream G650 you use a side-mounted controller for the avionics suite. It looks for all the world like a sidestick, but it’s not. There are multiple ways to do anything you want to do on the various displays. The side-mount cursor control device is in many cases the handiest one.

There’s also a head-up display with enhanced vision. The primary flight displays feature synthetic vision, all technologies that Gulfstream pioneered, many of them with longtime partners Honeywell and Rockwell Collins.

Taxiing is done via the side-mounted tiller. It’s very sensitive, so you need to lead all of your turns and make very slight and smooth inputs. I got a little better by the time we arrived at the takeoff end of the runway. Once you line up to go, you can forget about the tiller and just fly the airplane. We weighed around 70,000 pounds, and our V1 and VR speeds were 107 and 109 knots, respectively. The rest of the Gulfstream fleet was staying on the ground due to incoming weather, but thankfully we were given the OK to go flying. The tower cleared us to go on Runway 19.

After activating the autothrottles, I stood them up and watched as they automatically advanced to our best takeoff power. And off we went, accelerating very briskly, barreling down the runway, the nosewheel within easy shouting distance of the centerline.

To avoid the need to negotiate with Center controllers for our strange flight plan, up to 45,000 feet and back down in stages, with maneuvering and slow flight in the mid-teens, Tom flight-planned us out to a military operations area off the coast, which we’d get to share with a bunch of fighter jets that day playing in and among the clouds like we were. None of that stuff was in the FMS, but Tom played the system like a virtuoso and we were soon on our way out over the Atlantic.

Our journey up to Flight Level 450 took just over 20 minutes at an airspeed of 300 knots and between 1,500 and 2,000 fpm. To get the feel of the fly-by-wire controls, I hand-flew the airplane on the departure and up through the mid-20s, using the HUD for primary reference and letting the autothrottles handle the thrust.

At 45,000 feet we leveled out and were able to see the airplane’s maximum forward speed of Mach .925. At that same altitude and Mach .90, we were burning a total of 1,500 pounds of fuel per hour, a remarkably low figure but one that is specifically crucial in the airplane achieving the kind of range figures it boasts.

At 45,000 feet hand-flying the airplane is easy. There’s plenty of control feel, and maneuvering feels very natural. I commented to Tom that if I hadn’t known it was a fly-by-wire airplane I never would have guessed. Gulfstream nailed the control feel.

We headed down to 15,000 feet at .90, so we got there fast and proceeded to do a number of maneuvers designed to demonstrate the smart envelope protection built into the system. With the airplane in landing configuration, for instance, you can hold the stick back and the plane will descend, never getting too slow but staying very slow, down to around 90 knots. Yikes. We also did an alpha limit demonstration, where we climbed at the maximum angle of attack, the envelope protection never once letting us get too slow, while allowing us to climb at maximum effort.

Heading back to KSAV we used another cool Gulfstream G650 safety device, its sophisticated 3-D weather radar, to pick our way between the buildups back to the base. As we listened on frequency, we heard a number of airliners calling the missed approach on the ILS and heading for an alternate. Instead we asked for the LPV to Runway 19 and got vectors toward the final and were cleared for the approach.

On final and on glidepath, the autothrottles kept us right on Vref, and using the HUD, I kept the needles centered. At our decision altitude (DA), I could see the runway lights through the enhanced vision system on the HUD — Tom said he saw the runway from there, and I believed him. The rain was lashing the windshield, and I was ready to go missed, but acquiring the runway environment at the normal DA allowed us to descend to 100 feet on the approach, so I kept it coming down, ready to go missed at any second. We needed every inch. I saw the runway, flipped up the HUD and landed. There is no automatic braking, but the big and powerful anti-skid brakes coupled with the powerful reversers got us stopped in no time, water flying up and in back of us as we made the first turnoff, less than 3,000 feet from touchdown, in a blinding rainstorm while airliners diverted elsewhere. I’m still smiling.

And that, my friends, is what the Gulfstream magic is all about.

A while later, after shutting down and grabbing a few last pictures, we regrouped in the briefing room. A wry smile on his face, Tom again asked what was the best airplane I’d flown. I smiled back. “I just got out of it,” I said.

Cost/Benefits

With the G650, Gulfstream has created an airplane that is at once instantly recognizable as a Gulfstream while being a brand-new airplane with best-in-class performance, comfort, safety features and support.

At a cost of $65 million, the Gulfstream G650 is competitive within its market, even more so because that price represents an all-up cost. You get paint, interior, EVS, synthetic vision, cabin management and much, much more, all of which are very substantial extra charges on some airplanes.

Gulfstream has orders for about 200 G650s, and at this writing it has delivered around 20 of them. My airplane, the factory demonstrator, was lucky serial number 13. If you were to order an airplane today, you’d get it in 2017. Having had the chance to both fly it and fly in it, I can only say this: It would totally be worth the wait.

Telling the difference between the G650 and the G550 isn’t as easy as you might think. Here are a few clues to help you out.

1. The top part of the Gulfstream G550’s horizontal tail is visibly more slanted than that of the new G650.

2. The Gulfstream G550 features seven windows on each side, versus the G650, which features rows of eight.

3. The G550’s winglets are longer than those featured on the G650, but they don’t stand up quite as straight.

4. The Gulfstream G650 comes equipped with EVS on the upper deck of the nose.

5. While it’s hard to tell from a distance, the G650’s windows are larger than the G550’s.

6. The engine nacelles featured on the G650 are slightly bigger than those of the G550.

7. In addition to larger windows, the G650’s door is also bigger than that of the G550.

8. Finally, if the jet features “G650″or “G550” in tall characters on the tail, it probably is one!

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The post We Fly: Gulfstream G650 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We recently got the chance to fly yet another member of the club, the Embraer Legacy 500, a long-awaited midsize marvel from the Brazilian manufacturer that has forged its way into the business aviation market with a handful of brilliantly engineered airplanes, the first couple of which, the Legacy 600 and Lineage 1000, were bizjet versions of successful regional airliners. The follow-ons were two light jets, the Phenom 100 and Phenom 300, which have become strong competitors against Cessna’s CJ models.

Embraer Legacy 500 at a Glance

With the Legacy 500, Embraer was clearly looking to move upstream with an airplane it hoped would enter service as the most technologically advanced midsize model available. Mission accomplished. It is without question one of the most advanced private airplanes in the world, period.

PUSHING LIMITS

You might think that people in the market for a new bizjet have complicated motivations, but that’s not so. Just like customers for light planes or tablet computers, for that matter, prospective bizjet buyers are motivated by basic desires. Four of these stand out: safety, performance, technology and comfort.

Embraer hopes those looking for midsize airplanes will consider the Legacy 500, because it offers owners of legacy midsize jets upgrades in every department. From the pilot’s point of view, it’s a fabulous ride.

Despite a tough economic environment when it launched the airplane in 2008, Embraer was wise enough to understand that, by the time the 500 came to market, things would likely be different and the clean-sheet airplane would be high on the list of those business jet operators who were looking for something new and exciting.

In fact, they would wind up getting more than they expected. In terms of price and weight, the 500 fits neatly into the midsize bizjet niche. Other important figures tell a different tale, however. With a range of 3,150 nm, a big dual-club cabin, big windows and lots of room for bags, the Legacy 500 will challenge not only midsize jets but super-mid models as well.

Niche-busting has been Embraer’s business plan from the get-go. Give customers more airplane for the money, which means more range, more room, great technology and good speed, and they will come. They have.

BASICS

Looking at it on the ramp, the Legacy 500 doesn’t seem like a revolutionary airplane. It’s got the pointy end at the front and the tail in back. It’s made mostly of metal, with composites in various places around the airplane where composites make sense. The landing gear is fairly conventional, with the pilot’s best friend, trailing link landing gear, on the mains.

The airplane is powered by a pair of Honeywell HTF7500E dual-fadec turbo­fans producing 7,036 pounds of thrust apiece. The engines are hardly unique to the Legacy 500. They also power the Gulfstream G280, the Challengers 300 and 350, the Avro RJX and the 500’s midsize sibling, the Legacy 450, which is making its way ­toward certification now. With excellent fuel efficiency, on-condition maintenance and advanced digital control, it’s easy to see why the HTF series engines are a popular choice for midsize and super-midsize airplanes.

As it has with its other models, Embraer underpromised and overdelivered on the Legacy 500. Its range of 3,125 nm at long-range cruise is 125 nm greater than the target, and its high-speed cruise range (Mach 0.80) of 2,948 nm is about 150 nm better than hoped for. Takeoff and landing distances are also substantially better than promised. The Legacy 500 takes off in just over 4,000 feet, which allows it to operate from many smaller airports. It lands in around half that distance.

Other bigger airplane features include single-point refueling, an externally serviced lavatory, and the future availability of a head-up display.

TECHNOLOGY

The 500 offers more futuristic features than any other midsize bizjet, or even super-midsize model, ever. It’s a full fly-by-wire (FBW) platform with next-generation avionics with huge displays, a paperless (well, almost) cockpit, advanced power management, envelope protection, and high efficiency fully automated engines. It has autothrottles and brake by wire, and its flight stability mode takes much of the bumpiness out of what would be an otherwise turbulent ride.

In stark contrast to complex reversion logic employed by some manufacturers, the fly-by-wire approach that Embraer adopted is simple. There are two laws: normal and direct. That’s it.

Direct mode is, as it sounds, an electronic interpretation of mechanical control of the airplane. Direct mode gives the pilot the feel of what the 500 would fly like if it were equipped with hydromechanical controls (it’s not). This mode is the emergency fallback option. The airplane still flies pretty well with it.

The normal mode is what the airplane is in all the time, unless there are a series of extraordinarily unlikely equipment failures that render the FBW computer inoperative. It’s still nice to know that direct mode works great if that were to happen.

In normal mode the Legacy 500 has all kinds of cool built-in safety features that were unheard of in any kind of bizjet 10 years ago. In midsize jets, they are an absolute first.

Normal mode protects against overspeed, overstress, overbank, underspeed, excessive yaw and more. The stick is employed by only one pilot at a time, which might take some getting used to for some pilots, though in a crewed environment, there should never be any confusion over which pilot has the controls.

WHEN MIDSIZE IS SUPER

We pilots like to think that famous airframe makers build these new jets so we can go flying in them. Would that were the case. The truth is they are transportation vehicles, plain and simple. The cockpit is simply the office where we pilots do our work. Of course, it’s our poorly kept secret that it’s the best job in the world, at least the flying part, that is.

Embraer knows who buys airplanes and where they sit, and so it didn’t stop innovating aft of the cockpit door. Far from it. The cabin of this new midsize jet is simply spectacular, representing the company’s best achievement to date.

One of the hallmarks of the super-midsize segment is a flat floor as opposed to a sunken alley. Like nothing else in the non-super-midsize segment, the 500 has a wide flat floor, which goes nicely with its 6-foot stand-up cabin, optional divans, wet galley, large inflight-accessible interior baggage compartment, vacuum flush toilet and a very low cabin altitude (6,000 feet at an altitude of 45,000 feet). All of this is nicely complemented by an extremely comfortable and elegantly styled interior.

As we’ve seen with Gulfstream’s industry leading windows in its G650, G280 and the emerging G500 and G600, windows are often the measure of the plane. While the glass in the Legacy 500 doesn’t quite measure up to the glass in the larger and more expensive Gulfstream models, it is still a striking feature. Situated at every seat in the double-club configuration, the windows provide an open ambience that defies the traditional feel of the midsize segment. Those of you who have spent time in the cabin of an older midsize model know what I mean.

The cabin seats are highly adjustable and can be moved outward ­toward the aisle for even more room. They can be optionally configured with lumbar support, heat and even massage function. I did not test the latter. There are stowable work tables between each facing seating section, and the seats recline into a berthing position, effectively creating up to four good-size beds for ­inflight napping.

Standard in the Legacy 500 is Honeywell’s Ovation Select cabin management system, an Ethernet based suite that supports high definition video, surround sound audio, global high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi throughout. The system interfaces nicely with most consumer electronics, especially with iPads and iPhones. There are even specially shaped hard pockets in the side panels to park your tablet in when it’s time for one of those inflight naps.

FUSION

Up front things are even nicer. The avionics are Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion, with four 15-inch displays, cursor control devices and paperless design. Unlike Pro Line 21’s, the design of the Fusion flight deck focuses on shallow menus for fewer clicks and shorter menu searches, point-and-click access, and one-touch accessibility.

Since my regular ride is a Cirrus SR22, I’m used to the open feel a side-mounted flight controller offers, but the feeling of openness and ­spaciousness in the new Embraer ­midsize jet is nothing short of spectacular. With crew seats that are comfortable and easily adjustable, the cockpit seems like a place you hang out rather than a cubby hole you squeeze into. Visibility is very good, thanks in part to the cleaned-up panel, which needs less space for gear, allowing more space for glass.

Displays are set up in what has become the de facto standard for airplanes in this class, with a primary flight display in front of each pilot, a multifunction display in between the two PFDs and a systems display below the MFD. The FMC keyboards are on a console between the pilots. You can still use the keyboards for most of the flight management duties, but many chores can be accomplished with the cursor control device, which I do my best not to refer to as a “mouse,” even if that is what it is. One feature I loved was the point-and-click flight plan feature. Get a reroute? Drag and drop to the new waypoints and you’re good to go.

Above the displays is the autopilot controller panel. An easy reach from either seat, this is the area of the cockpit where you’re likely to spend much of your time on a long flight.

THE FLIGHT

I flew the Legacy 500 out of Embraer’s North American facilities in Melbourne, Florida, this fall. To say that I was looking forward to the flight is a huge understatement. To say that it was worth the wait is as well.

My right-seater for the flight was Embraer flight test pilot Eduardo Camelier, whose abilities I’d already witnessed firsthand. Camelier flew the airplane for my photo shoot earlier in the day, and he was remarkably precise despite having to fly quite slowly to avoid overtaking the piston twin I was shooting from.

Camelier went through the short and sweet prestart and starting checklists with me — the shortness is not just a pilot convenience; quick startups and turnarounds greatly increase the utility of the airplane, something Embraer with its airline heritage prides itself on.

After an easy taxi out for takeoff — the 500 is easy to taxi, though as with many jets with big powerful brakes, it takes some getting used to the touch required to keep the passengers comfortable — we lined up and got ready to go.

With autothrottles armed, I raised the thrust levers to near vertical as the system took over and set our preset takeoff thrust automatically. Directional control was easy, and we accelerated briskly despite the warm day, rotating at 122 knots.

When it comes to the fly-by-wire system, there are a couple of exceptions to the “fly it like any airplane” rule, but they make the flying easier. The most noteworthy is that, when you want to establish a flight attitude, you use the sidestick to command that attitude, whether it’s a climb, a descent, a turn or some combination. Let go of the stick, and the system remembers what you asked it to do. It’s an easy feature to get used to.

Overall, the 500 flies remarkably sweetly. It’s one of the two or three best-flying airplanes I’ve ever had the chance to try my hand at.

The plan was to climb to FL 350 directly, but in the busy Florida airspace, that wasn’t going to happen. We instead stopped at 19,000 feet to do some airwork. I was curious to see just how the FBW system could help pilots avoid hazardous flight regimes, which meant we were going to intentionally put ourselves into those regimes to see for ourselves.

I put the nose down and let the speed creep up toward the barber pole. The system saw it coming and didn’t let it happen, raising the nose just slightly and annunciating the overspeed condition. Then, at Camelier’s urging, I wrapped it up into a tight turn and watched as the system kept the G-forces within check, protecting the structure and the payload. I also got the chance to try to fly the airplane too slowly, which again, the system did not let me do, warning me of the underspeed condition and gently pushing the nose forward like a wise and patient instructor, keeping the airspeed just barely above the minimum airspeed.

I also tried out the airplane in direct mode, flying it as though the FBW were mechanically connected to the flight controls. The effect was, well, like flying a regular airplane, a very nice regular airplane, with good stability and control feel. It made me want to get back to normal mode as soon as I could though, I admit.

Single-engine work was remarkably uneventful. Believe it or not, an engine failure is hard to even discuss as an emergency in this airplane — it’s so easy to handle on one engine. I did some single-engine airwork, and flying the 500 on one engine is very much like flying the airplane on two engines (albeit with less power). So good is the FBW system at compensating for the loss of thrust on one side that you can take your feet off the rudder pedals.

We ventured up to 35,000 feet to check the speed at cruise. Sure enough, we were nibbling right around Mach 0.80, the high-speed cruise figure.

Heading back to Melbourne for my one and only landing in the 500, we kept it in normal mode with full flaps. As flaps are brought in (to three “notches” or greater), the FBW system signals the computer to change to a new submode, speed stability. The key on the approach is to use the trim switch to select the trim speed you desire. Hit the button and the airplane will maintain that speed, pitching up or down very slightly to hold that figure. The technique sounds odd, but once you do it in the airplane, it makes perfect sense.

Despite it being my first time in the airplane, I made a decent landing — what did I tell you about that trailing link landing gear? — and we got down and stopped in just over 2,000 feet of ground roll, thanks largely to the huge carbon brakes and brake by wire.

THE FUTURE

The Legacy 500 has, once again for Embraer, busted a niche. It is a midsize airplane in terms of range and price (right around $20 million), but it behaves in many ways like a super-midsize model. With a world-class cabin, class leading technologies and safety systems, and the support of a truly global manufacturer that seems to have committed to the North American market, the Legacy 500 has a lot going for it.

The story doesn’t end there. Embraer has another Legacy coming down the line. The Legacy 450 is a slightly smaller and less rangy model with nearly all of the cool features of the 500 but a price of just $16 million. Embraer expects certification for the 450 soon.

See how Embraer’s Legacy 500 holds up against its competitors.

View more of the Legacy 500 in our photo gallery here.

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The post We Fly: Embraer Legacy 500 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It’s likely that the PA-46 was responsible for at least two companies’ decision to buy the assets of a failed Piper out of bankruptcy and continue the legacy, and the great lineup. Indeed, one Piper employee a few years back, when PA-46 sales accounted for around 80 percent of Piper sales, referred to Piper as a “PA-46 company.”

Check out this photo gallery where we follow the evolution of the PA-46 over the years.

Also check out Robert’s in-depth piece on the PA-46.

The post PA-46s appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In the wake of Gulfstream’s blockbuster introduction of its flagship G650 (and now G650ER) fly-by-wire, ultralong-range and high-subsonic beauties, I guess I should have stopped being surprised by any large-body wonders the company puts in the air. The G650 Gulfstream jet set the standard for the ultralong-range category, leaving its two large-cabin, ultralong-range rivals staring at the 650’s tail section, both literally and figuratively, as the Gulfstream jet pulled away.

It didn’t happen by chance. The 650 made use of some remarkable new technologies, so it only seemed natural that Gulfstream would leverage some of them into new jets designed to take the place of the company’s lower priced models. It had even been reported that the Savannah, Georgia, company would be coming out with a “G450 replacement.” The story, while bearing some elements of the truth, turned out to be a red herring.

Instead of a G450 replacement, Gulfstream has come out with a pair of new jets, the G600 and the G500, that promise to take the magic of the G650 slightly down-market. It has created a pair of large-cabin cruisers that have less range but are just as fast and in a few ways even more sophisticated than the company’s flagship model while costing many millions of dollars less.

In development for more than five years now, the G500 Gulfstream jet will make its first flight in 2015 with certification in 2017 and first delivery in 2018. First flight for the G600 will be in 2017 with the first customer delivery in 2019. Though it might sound like a long time, the schedule is actually very ambitious for what amounts essentially to a pair of clean-sheet airplanes that will be in many ways the most advanced bizjets ever.

The program is already in an advanced state, as evidenced by Gulfstream rolling out to the delight of thousands of employees and hundreds of invited guests the first completed G500 Gulfstream jet. There are two new factory buildings and numerous labs for the new programs at Gulfstream’s Savannah campus, including the so-called “iron bird,” used to test systems like actuators for power control, flight controls and landing gear, for example. There’s an avionics test lab, and a cabin development lab in which engineers use 3-D vision goggles showing computer-­generated renderings that allow them to examine every possible layout and cabin component for ease of use and efficiency. The two new airplanes will get the benefit of the company’s advanced sound labs — Gulfstream says that the cabins of the G500 and G600 will be just as quiet as that of the G650 Gulfstream jet. That’s a high goal, but who would bet against it?

Customer Input

For years Gulfstream has designed its airplanes with input from what it sees as the most important stakeholders in the process, the customers. In creating the two models, Gulfstream designers made extensive use of customer involvement through its Advanced Technology Customer Advisory Team program. It sounds a bit scary to ask customers to tell you exactly what they want the end product to be. In this case, those customers said they wanted an airplane as fast as the G650 with a cabin about as comfortable (if not as long) that flies in excess of 5,000 nm, and is as chic and cutting edge as the G650. Customers insisted on windows as large as those on the G650, which are the largest windows in the industry.

Letting your customers ask for the sun, moon and stars is a bad strategy unless you can deliver on such expectations. The company did just that with the G650 and, based on its preliminary specifications for the two new jets, appears to have done it again.

New Gulfstream Lineup

In terms of range, the two airplanes fill, in essence, niches below the recently certified G650ER (extended range), the G650 and the G550, though the equation for potential customers isn’t quite that simple.

The G550, which just a few years ago was the most capable bizjet in the world, boasts a range of 6,750 nm at Mach 0.80, while the G600 will be a 6,200 nm airplane at Mach 0.85. So while not as rangy as the 550, it will cover its ground faster. Moreover, at its normal high-speed cruise of Mach 0.90, it will be a 4,800 nm airplane. It’s also a more technologically advanced model in numerous ways. Gulfstream stresses that the G650 and G650ER are still its flagship models, and with their enormous range and comfort, as well as their hefty price tags, it’s hard to argue that fact.

The range of the G600 at 6,200 nm is impressive in its own right, making it capable of flying from New York to Moscow or from London to Beijing at nine-tenths the speed of sound. At Mach 0.85, significantly faster than the high-speed cruise of Gulfstream’s erstwhile competitors, the city pairs for the G600 and G500 are even more remarkable. As with the G650ER and the G650, G500 and G600 fliers can choose to go either “incredibly fast” and “really far” or “really fast” and “incredibly far.” The word from Gulfstream is that its customers are choosing the “incredibly fast” option, selecting 0.90 cruise for the majority of their trips.

In many ways, however, the G600 and G500 will be more advanced than anything Gulfstream (or anyone else) is making. They feature the most advanced avionics in the industry (more on that in a bit), the most spacious if not the longest cabins in their segment and very low cabin altitudes — the same as in the G650, a 4,850-foot cabin at 51,000 feet with 100 percent fresh air for arriving at the destination feeling refreshed. At 41,000 feet, the cabin altitude is a mere 3,000 feet, which is best in class by 1,500 feet. The two new airplanes will have what are arguably the most popular features in any bizjet, the huge windows that Gulfstream pioneered on the G650. It’s not an overstatement to say that the cabin is designed around the windows, with one for every individual seat and the overall effect being one of great openness to go along with the quietude.

Boasting brand-new fuselage cross sections that are nearly as big as the 650’s and bigger than those of the G550 and G450, the G500 and the G600 will be closely related to each other but not identical. They have identical cross sections, but the G600 is a notably larger airplane than the G500, being about 5 feet longer and about 14,000 pounds heavier (at max takeoff weight). The G600 will have slightly scaled-up wings and horizontal tail, and it will get more thrust from essentially the same Pratt & Whitney Canada turbofan engines.

Those New Engines

Gulfstream has been associated with Rolls-Royce engines for decades, but the company makes clear that it picks the best engine for the application. The G280 super midsize jet features Honeywell turbofans, and the G150 and G200 are powered by Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines.

The G500 and G600 will be outfitted with the brand-new P&W 800 series engines, the G500 by a pair of ­PW814GA turbofans putting out 15,144 pounds of thrust apiece. The G600 Gulfstream jet will be powered by a pair of ­PW815GA engines, delivering 15,680 pounds of thrust apiece. The engines are among the most efficient turbofans ever produced, thanks to Pratt & Whitney’s pioneering work in combustor efficiency, which found a way to keep fuel burn temperatures from getting too hot while keeping the fuel being burned from being exposed to flame for too long a time.

Over a 3,000 nm mission at Mach 0.85, the G500, claims Gulfstream, will be the most efficient business aircraft, using right around 15,000 pounds of fuel. The G600 won’t be far behind when it comes online in 2018.

New also will be revolutionary thrust reversers by Nordam that will translate about 50 percent of the forward thrust of the engines into reverse thrust for powerful slowing.

The engine will feature a 10,000-hour TBO at inception, with major inspections at 750-hour intervals, a 50 percent improvement over the Rolls engines on the G450 and G550. The engines come with a six-year, 3,500-hour warranty, part of the best warranty package for an airplane that we know of. The primary and secondary airframe structures, including doors, flight controls and nacelles, come with a 20-year, 20,000-hour warranty.

There are currently nine engines in the development program, and among them they have amassed more than 1,700 hours of operation, including more than 200 hours flying on Pratt & Whitney’s 747 test bed aircraft. The engine was scheduled for FAA certification by the end of 2014.

We “Fly” the G500

The G500 and G600 will feature the Symmetry flight deck — the most advanced avionics suite that I have seen on any airplane.

The Primus Epic suite on which most of Gulfstream’s PlaneView avionics suites are based was a revolutionary product when it was released a decade ago, and it has found a home on around a dozen different jets and has been spun off into at least two different avionics products, the Apex and Elite flight decks.

While Primus Epic has a lot of capability, it is based on an interface first developed nearly two decades ago. While the displays are big and the graphics pretty, the user interface still features drop-down text menus.

The new model, which Gulfstream rightfully takes a lot of credit for, throws the old interface out the window and creates a thoroughly modern, touch-screen-based design using very shallow menus and a highly graphical interface. The new design incorporates advanced synthetic vision on an array of displays, and users will find each highly and easily configurable. The system will incorporate the latest head-up display technology with four times the resolution of Gulfstream’s EVS II product for even easier use on lower landing minimums — as low as 100 feet agl.

Touch screens are everywhere. I had the chance to “fly” the G500 Gulfstream jet in the avionics test lab, and I was astounded by the ease of use and clean cockpit design. There are a total of 10 touch screens (several of them interchangeable) and touch-screen controllers, and the airplane will be able to dispatch with a number of them inoperative, however unlikely a scenario that might be. All of the screens are designed with pronounced edges to anchor your hand against if there’s turbulence or just for more accurate touch performance. There are even three overhead touch-screen controllers.

Fly by Wire

The cockpit design revolves around the use of sidestick controllers, a first for Gulfstream. The fly-by-wire flight control system makes use of what Gulfstream terms active control sidesticks (ACS), a first for civil airplanes, says the company. The system makes use of highly intelligent force feedback to simulate control loads and simultaneously provide a virtual “linkage” between pilot and copilot controls, so there’s no need for software logic to verify which pilot has control of the aircraft. Both of them do.

As with the G650 fly-by-wire system, the flight control of the G500 and G600 will be more Boeing than Airbus. While the system has significant protections built into it, the modes are largely transparent to the pilots, who will fly the airplane like any other.

Gulfstream’s inclusion of sidestick controllers also freed designers up to create a new seat, which I tried out during my visit to Savannah. Because there’s no control column, the seats don’t need the center cutout, so the pilots can have a seat that is dedicated to both comfort and efficient positioning. There’s even an armrest for supportive side­stick flying.

Gulfstream officially launched the two new planes in mid-October and introduced them at the National Business Aviation Association convention in Orlando, Florida, a week later.

The G500 is well along in its development; the first airplanes are already being built in advance of the first flight. There will be five test G500 aircraft and four G600s. The very nicely equipped G500 will sell for $43.5 million. The G600 will be about two years behind the G500, with first flight scheduled for 2017 and entry into service for 2019, and it will sell for $54.5 million.

With these two new airplanes, both of which improve substantially on what had been considered state of the art, Gulfstream has solidified its position as the leading large-cabin bizjet maker in the world, underscoring its commitment to performance, comfort, efficiency, safety, reliability and support. With Gulfstream’s track record of success dating back several decades, its customers have come to expect nothing less from the company and the world-class airplanes it makes.

See more of the G500 and G600 here in our photo gallery.

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The post Gulfstream Jet Review: G500 and G600 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

For those of you who’ve been trying to get your hands on an Apple iPad Mini, there’s good news. You might not need one.

As cool as the newest and littlest iPad is, it’s difficult not to swallow hard when writing that check for the version you need, the one with GPS and built-in gyro, which means it comes with 4G cellular connectivity, something you might not need. The cost is steep — from $459 for the 16 GB model to $659 for the 64 GB. The flip side to the cellular model is using an external receiver, like the Appareo Stratus or Garmin GDL 39, or a wireless GPS receiver (Bluetooth or Wi-Fi), all of which will give you GPS/WAAS without it being built-in at some considerable extra expense

There are options, and just as we’re seeing Android devices take a huge slice of the smartphone pie, we’re bound to see them make inroads in aviation apps, as well.

In fact, they have arrived.

I recently flew the 32 GB Google Nexus 7, which, at 7 inches diagonally, is slightly mini’er than the Mini, loaded with the popular Garmin Pilot, one of the great all-in-one piloting apps.

The Google Nexus 7 proved an extremely satisfying product, right on par with the Mini overall and better in a number of ways. It has a faster processor (a quad-core), a sharper display, a terrific user interface, Bluetooth and high-speed Wi-Fi and the ability to do all kinds of non-aviation-related things, like e-mail and Netflix.

Unlike the Mini, the Nexus 7 comes with GPS/WAAS and a solid-state gyro. And the best part is, it’s out the door for $250, less than half the price of a comparable 4G iPad Mini.

Flying with the Nexus 7 is a delight. In my side-yoke-controlled Cirrus, I hardly need to use a smaller iPad, but there are a lot of pilots flying with sticks or conventional yokes for whom the 10-inch iPad is a tight fit. The display is plenty bright in the direct sunlight — at least as good as my first-gen iPad — and it features, like the Mini, pinch zooming and one-finger scrolling.

My worry about Android devices is the relative lack of aviation apps for them, but with Garmin Pilot, that concern is answered. The Android app, which has gotten very little notice in the aviation press, is nearly as good as the company’s fine iOS version, lacking just a few features, like the panel page, split screen and flight plan filing. What you do get is Internet and, with an external receiver, in-cockpit weather — with the GDL-39, you get free ADS-B weather — crisp and zoomable charts, VFR charts, IFR low and high en routes, flight planning and airport information pages, all with a few swipes of the finger. There’s Safe-Taxi surface awareness charts — all are geo-referenced — and much more. And Garmin has steadily updated its Android app, so it’s only going to get more features as time goes along, with all of them rolled into regular product updates.

The Apple iPad Mini is sure to find its way into a lot of cockpits, and for good reason. But for those who are looking for the same capability at a much lower price point, the Nexus 7 offers a great alternative.

The post iPad Mini Killer for Less Than Half the Price appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Aspen Avionics has recently come out with some new products and product features that continue to add to the allure of its ingenious Evolution Flight Display (EFD), a compact, easy-to-install retrofit (mostly) PFD that the company launched several years ago. The product has proved popular with owners of all kinds of aircraft, from light singles through larger twins, in part because it offers a lot of capability for less. Aspen has delivered nearly 5,000 displays around the world.

Over the past couple of years, however, the big question for Aspen has been how to grow the business. Those who know the company’s history won’t be surprised to learn that it has come up with some unconventional and intriguing ideas on the subject, including a way to link your iPad or tablet computer to your panel-mount system and an autopilot interface that allows owners to upgrade their autopilot and have it play nicely with the Aspen PFD. Aspen announced both initiatives at AirVenture Oshkosh last year. We had a chance to check out the products installed and flying at Sun ‘n Fun.

As has been the case with all of Aspen’s products to date, Connected Panel and the autopilot interface are both ways to create value for existing or would-be Aspen customers while making the company’s core offering, the Evolution Flight Display, a more versatile and therefore more enticing product.

When Aspen Avionics introduced its Evolution Flight Display, a primary flight display (PFD) that was designed from the start to be an easy add-on for thousands of existing airplanes, the company was staking its claim to an important part of the panel. The EFD, which is inexpensive and has an integrated ADAHRS and air data computer, along with GPS/WAAS and more, was designed to also work with the components customers already had in their panels, including the Garmin GNS 430 and GNS 530 navigators, which are installed in the panels of around 100,000 airplanes worldwide.

The Aspen Approach
The magic behind the Aspen PFD is that it doesn’t require any surgery to the existing panel in order to install the display. The guts and brains of it reside in the space behind the round hole vacated by the former electromechanical instruments. The former round gauges are redistributed to serve as standby instruments, so no additional expense is needed there either. The biggest expense typically is installing the proprietary antenna for the system. Still, the costs associated with getting a PFD in the panel of a former steam gauge airplane are lower than ever.

The downside to the Aspen display is its smaller size, though this is a bit of a subjective call. For some pilots, me included, the EFD does everything they’d want it to do, and because Aspen does such a good job with the human factors, the size of the display just works. You get a lot of information, but it’s organized very clearly. The symbols and text are a large size but uncrowded, and the colors help set the various functions apart from each other so effectively that the display almost seems to speak to you. It’s one of those products with execution that looks so effortless it appears to have happened without any human intervention at all.

The engineers at Aspen could tell that nothing could be further from the truth.

When paired with one of the larger Garmin navigators, such as the GNS 530 or GTN 750, the effect is very similar to the PFD/MFD arrangement you get with a conventional factory-installed glass panel. Because the overall cost of the Aspen package (including installation) is lower than that of the larger and more integrated Garmin G600/G500, a lot of airplane owners are willing to go with the smaller display.

When paired with a good multi-function navigator, like one of the Garmin boxes, you have a winning combination of capabilities, along with greatly enhanced reliability — the addition of solid-state attitude is for many Aspen customers the biggest safety edge — added redundancy and greatly enhanced situational awareness.

Moreover, you can put one or two additional Aspen multifunction displays next to the PFD to bring additional real estate to the Aspen package. And Aspen’s nicely implemented synthetic vision on the PFD adds to the value too.

The iPad Connection
Aspen Avionics is closing in on certification for its Connected Panel, an iPad gateway product the company announced at last year’s Oshkosh show. The technology is one of the most intriguing introductions in avionics in a long time, because it forces us to rethink what avionics are and how our portable and handheld devices are integrated with the avionics system. Before Connected Panel, portable devices weren’t integrated at all.

Connected Panel brings portable and panel-mount products together by allowing a pilot to use an iPad (other devices are on the way) to do any number of aviation chores and move data back and forth between the iPad and the panel-mount avionics. In the process, Connected Panel keeps things on the up and up, serving as buffer, backup and traffic cop for the data that comes through it, keeping the system safe and providing potentially robust recovery capabilities in case of bad data or an interrupted transfer, for example.

Connected Panel (which is expected to sell for less than $2,500) is slated for certification soon. The device, the CG100, is a small blind-mounted box that connects using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB, and also features flash memory storage (for data logging applications and more). Aspen’s displays are optimized for Connected Panel, but apps can interface with any panel-mount hardware they can hook up with.

The apps are the secret to Connected Panel, and Aspen gives full credit to its partners, which range from Sporty’s and ForeFlight for flight data and data logging to JP Instruments for engine instrumentation. Aspen shares its app and hardware source data with app developers, who are free to write apps that will play with Aspen or other devices. Some apps might be either free of charge or an included feature, as with ForeFlight; you get the Connected Panel interface for the price of the ForeFlight app. Other apps could cost anywhere from a few bucks to hundreds of dollars.

To try out Connected Panel, we used ForeFlight Mobile Pro, a leading aviation charting, mapping and data app that has been optimized for Connected Panel. ForeFlight allowed us to see Connected Panel’s capabilities and potential. In case you haven’t tried it, ForeFlight Mobile Pro provides a tremendously more satisfying user experience than the Garmin GNS 430W does. On the other hand, the Garmin 430W is an FAA TSO’d IFR navigator, something an iPad will never be. ForeFlight is a graphically rich and feature-packed aviation app, something a 430W will never be. Connected Panel gives users the best of both products.

I tried out Connected Panel in Aspen’s SR22 at Plant City, Florida, recently, and I was impressed. I’d been a skeptic too. The idea of using an iPad connected to the panel for serious aviation tasks seemed a bit of a stretch, but I was wrong. The interaction with ForeFlight was seamless. I was able to load flight plans from ForeFlight and import them into the SR22’s Garmin GNS 430 navigators, and vice versa. The biggest surprise was how readily I adjusted to the idea of using an iPad as what amounts to a touch-screen programmer for the FMS and MFD. It couldn’t have been easier or more intuitive. Not to mention useful. And when all was said and done I had a brilliant display — my iPad — to show off the strengths of the 430W.

There are sure to be skeptics who question the wisdom of melding the portable and panel-mount worlds. I know. I was one of those skeptics. Aspen’s claim, and it’s a convincing one, is that there’s little to no risk of doing something silly by accident on the iPad and having that screw up your flight plan, fuel planning, databases or what have you. That’s because nothing happens in the panel without having to first command it and second confirm it. And because Connected Panel apps are written to interface through the gateway in a prescribed fashion, there can be no surprises. The risk, it turns out, seems to be the same as simply entering incorrect information into a flight plan or other panel-mount system. Could it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not really.

If the risks are small, the potential rewards are great. For pennies on the dollar you get a greatly enhanced user interface for your panel — via the app — and an additional touch-screen controller/display (your iPad) as part of the deal.

Aspen expects that it will be much more than an iPad link. A potential application that shows great promise, to name just one of hundreds of possibilities, is a data loader for your MFDs or FMSs. Load your data onto your iPad (if it’s supported) and then just load your data onto your devices through Connected Panel instead of swapping cards and lugging laptops around. Jeppesen, for one, is already working with Aspen on just such an app, which is as yet unnamed.

It all sounds cool, but it’s important to remember that this is just one of hundreds of possible apps. I can think of a few that I’d like to see, and if that’s the case you can rest assured that there are scores of clever developers out there working on things we haven’t yet dreamed of.

Autopilot Connection
Another way that Aspen found to make its compact PFD even more valuable was by making it compatible with more autopilots and by enhancing the integration of those autopilots.

The most noteworthy of these is the Avidyne DFC90, an attitude-based high-performance digital autopilot with built-in envelope protection and straight-and-level recovery mode. The autopilot is available on the Cirrus SR22 and SR20 and the Piper PA46. Avidyne is closing in on certification on a number of Cessna 182 models, and it plans to get approvals in a number of Beechcraft Bonanza models, as well as numerous others yet to be announced, down the line.

With its latest update the Aspen PFD, specifically the EFD 1000 Pro, has been updated to interface with the Avidyne autopilot in the same way as Avidyne’s R9 PFD does. The Aspen display, as you can see in the accompanying photographs, displays the autopilot state, allows for altitude preselect and displays rate of climb selected or indicated airspeed. It also displays messages from the DFC90’s envelope protection features, including annunciating when the straight-and-level emergency recovery button has been pushed.

When combined with the DFC90, the EFD 1000 Pro becomes the nerve center for aircraft control, giving control and display to the impressive capabilities of what is one of the best autopilots available in the GA market and arguably the best available on the aftermarket for light airplanes. I’ve flown the DFC90 on a couple of different Cirrus SR22s, and I’m impressed with everything about the autopilot, from its positive and smooth flight control to the turbine-level features, including indicated airspeed hold, to the remarkably advanced envelope protection features. The marriage of Aspen’s fine PFD to the DFC90 is a great match.

The pair of components goes for an attractive price too: The DFC90 starts at right around $9,995, the Evolution Pro PFD starts at $10,180, and the autopilot software activation goes for just under $2,000. So for around $22,000 (plus substantial installation costs, of course), the owner of a suitable candidate airplane gets a remarkably capable system with primary flight display and a top-notch digital autopilot. No other system with similar components and features comes close.

The safety benefits are great. The system affords a lot of redundancy (especially if an Aspen MFD is added to the mix), the reliability of solid-state attitude — the AHRS in the autopilot drives the autopilot — and the in-your-face clarity of PFD annunciation for your autopilot modes.

They’re great features to add to an existing airplane. Throw in the Connected Panel, and you might be adding new features, in the form of Connected Panel apps, for a long time to come.

View our photo gallery showing the latest products from Aspen Avionics.

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That date that will presumably protect the company from the delays plaguing Dassault in the certification program for its larger and more expensive Falcon 5X, which will make use of the same Snecma Safran turbofans, engines that once a few bugs are worked out, will feature unparalleled efficiency.

At a price of $26 million, the Longitude will boast a range of 4,000 nm and a top speed of Mach .86, figures that will make it a strong competitor against the aging and more expensive Bombardier Challenger 605 and the Embraer Legacy 650.

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