Cirrus’ Jet finds its footing

OSHKOSH — In 1997, Mike Van Staagen was imagining aircraft concepts for a personal jet. Like many big ideas, it started as a sketch on a napkin. The early concepts looked like a mini DC-10 rather than the v-tail Cirrus Vision SJ50 we see today.

The aircraft dubbed ‘V1’, flown by former US Navy test pilot Tim Berg, took to the sky on July 3rd at 9:47 AM for its 45-minute maiden flight.

“It’s a fairly unconventional design, so it was a relief to have it fly. I couldn’t have been more happy,” said Van Staagen, who serves as Vice President for Cirrus Design’s Advanced Development Group.

Though the road to first flight was not without its challenges to tackle. On the day of its would-be first flight, the aircraft was parked outside for the first time for a three-hour run on its fanjet.

During the course of that day, two issues arose that would scrub plans for the SJ50’s maiden flight. First, the aircraft developed a slight fuel imbalance prompting last minute troubleshooting, as well as weather that didn’t inspire confidence in flight safety. The first flight would have to wait one more day.

Since it took its first steps, the newborn Williams FJ33-4A-19 fanjet powered aircraft has amassed 25 hours in the sky, not including its most recent flight from Duluth, MN to Oshkosh, with a stopover in nearby Wausau.

The early flight tests have been used to ring the bugs out of the electronics, verify operation of the data acquisition system and gain basic flying familiarization for the pilots in the flight test campaign.

The goal for the early flights was to prove that the SJ50 could make it safely to AirVenture.

So far, Cirrus has flown the aircraft to an altitude of 16,000 feet and has reached speeds up to 208 knots. On the other end of the spectrum, the aircraft has flown as slowly as 78 knots with partial flaps in straight and level flight.