Every pilot who's ever flown a plane has only ever wanted three things from it they've wanted it to
be able to go faster they want it to be able to go higher and they want to carry more stuff in it
now every general aviation aircraft has a lot of strong points but is equally rubbish in so
many other ways for example the new diamond da50 a very modern efficient engine which burns jet A1
instead of AvGas but it's on an aircraft which has rather disappointing performance statistics
the JMB VL3 remember when I flew one of those very good looking aircraft and pretty good on
paper too but you can only carry two people then the Cirrus SR-22 the aircraft that I
choose to fly you can carry four people in it it's a very comfortable cockpit really good on
paper great performance statistics but it uses engine technology from over a hundred years ago
This is a Cirrus SR22 Generation 3 we're actually up to generation six now and a year ago I made a
video asking Sirius to make some improvements to the next version the G7 of this aircraft in
that year absolutely nothing has happened there hasn't even been an announcement of whether an
SR-22 Generation 7 is even going to come out and if it does we have no idea what features
and improvements it's going to have the only thing that did change in that year is my list of
requests actually has got quite a lot longer so here is my updated list of what I would love to
see love to see please hear us from a G7 version of the SR22 and as I go through my list I'd love
to hear from you in the comments as well if you fly what improvements would you like to see in
the next generation of the aircraft that you fly starting off with arguably one of the most
important parts of any aircraft the engine and in particular not just the type of engine but
the fuel source that this engine actually takes now this aircraft Burns something called Avgas
not jet A1 which a lot of you will see at airports especially if you fly commercially but Avgas that
powers this is becoming less and less available in airports especially when you get outside of areas
like Continental Australia and the Continental USA not a problem of course if you are only planning
to fly around say Continental USA or Australia or even some parts of Europe but for us that live
in the southern hemisphere if we want to actually travel further afield which I have big plans to do
in the future it makes it really hard the moment you get into southeast Asia when avgas becomes
really hard to get hold of see anyone flying around the world generally takes generally takes
the same kind of path on this leg when you've got into the UK and you want to get across to Asia
most people generally go south through Europe kind of into the Northeast side of Africa here across
the top through Pakistan India down into southeast Asia and either across the Pacific or up through
Russia the trouble is Avgas is becoming less and less available in places like Egypt in Bahrain
in the Middle East Pakistan some parts of India you can generally find out gas in places like
Singapore but now I've been told as well Indonesia Avgas is getting scarcer and scarcer as well and I
found out the other day actually airports like Jakarta aren't even accepting propeller-based
aircraft they're only taking Jets so even if you strapped a massive tank onto the back seat and
filled that up so you didn't have to stop as often if your aircraft takes out gas and you're planning
to fly around the world it's getting harder and harder to do that nowadays so in the G7 I'd love
to see a brand new engine something like the Continental CD 300 which is on the front of
the diamond da50 a jet A1 burning engine which not only gives you more options for refuelling
around the world but it's fully FADEC as well now if you're not familiar with FADEC I've used
acronyms in the past like farewell all dumb engine controls the Cirrus currently has two levers which
are used to operate the engine a throttle lever which controls the basically the air going into
the engine and a mixture that controls the amount of fuel as a pilot we manually adjust
those depending on which stage of flight we're in but a fader controlled aircraft means you
only have one lever you basically set the amount of power that you want the engine to produce and a
computer works out the rest for you to be honest serious if you just put the FedEx control and a
jet A1 burning engine into the G7 version off the new SR-22 I think that in itself would make it
the best-selling aircraft for now and for a long time into the future as well however there are
a few more things that I'd like to suggest the next one is actually back outside the aircraft
this is the undercarriage of the SR-22 now this is what we call a fixed gear undercarriage meaning
that it's well it's fixed it doesn't go up and down like some other aircraft do now I'm not
asking for a retractable undercarriage in the G7 version of the SR-22 but what I would like is a
change to the design of this in particular this undercarriage being fixed is very very fixed if
you bounce a landing you'll actually Bounce Off The Runway quite aggressively if we could have a
trailing gear undercarriage like you have in the diamond aircraft the vision jet as well
the series sf50 Vision jet has a trailing gear undercarriage it means that when the aircraft
touches down the wheels have got a little bit more give in them before the aircraft
will settle down onto the runway I just think it would make it a little bit easier especially for
some of the lower time pilots who don't have as much experience in this aircraft just to be
able to land it a little bit more consistently and possibly even a little bit more safely thank you
now inside the cockpit of the Cirrus SR-22 you can technically fit up to four people including
the pilot however when you start putting fuel in the tanks and you can actually quite easily
go overweight you can go over What's called the maximum takeoff weight in this aircraft
for my Cirrus SR22 G3 if I have full tanks in the wings I can't take any more than three
fully sized adult passengers so what I'd love to see is a payload increase in this
aircraft something like beach did with their Bonanza I think was the G36 they had a 155
pound payload increase with the new version of that aircraft it would be great to be able
to fly the SR-22 with full tanks of fuel and four passengers on board and not be overweight
inside the cockpit what I would really love to have and I know I've been spoiled by this
and yes if you watch my channel for a while you'll know that I am a Garmin
Ambassador so I'm going to be a bit biased here in the Cirrus SR22 G7 I would love to
have Garmin touchscreen technology for the avionics exactly like we have in
the sf50 vision jet we don't need all those individual buttons to type in data into our
avionics anymore this is 2023. I just think in the G7 everything touchscreen
thank you
seriously you've been at the Forefront of aviation technology for a long time
I for one really enjoyed flying your aircraft for a long time now as well
one question though what's the sustainability policy moving forwards what are you guys doing
as well to minimize the impact on the environment for people like me who love flying these aircraft
but are starting to get a little bit concerned maybe about the footprint that we're leaving
behind on this planet I'd love to know for example is serious looking at electric
propulsion as a possible future technology like some other aircraft manufacturers already are if
you're curious to know what it's like to fly a fully electric powered aircraft this is a video
I made on the Tesla of Aviation Pipistrel Alpha Electro just listen to the sound this thing makes