If you didn’t already have enough reasons to consider buying a SR22T, Cirrus has given you one more with their announcement that they can now equip your new SR22T Perspective with FIKI—Flight into Known Icing. Perspective is the G1000-type glass cockpit that Cirrus announced in May 2008. I help people around the world who are thinking of buying a Cirrus SR22, or Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, so if you like my inputs, please contact me as early in your decision making process as possible, so that I can provide you the most assistance. You can phone me at 650-967-2500, or send me an email.
Recently, we awarded Cirrus Design the 2008 GAMMY award for Design Innovation. Here in Silicon Valley where innovation is everywhere, some companies have concluded that…
it's the speed of innovation that counts. Their corporate strategies are to innovate at such a rapid rate that competitors will have a hard time keeping up. Cirrus clearly uses this strategy and in the process has redefined the General Aviation marketplace.
Known icing is important and anyone who is serious about getting somewhere would like to have it. Yet there have been few choices for single-engine piston aircraft owners. Previously, only the Mooney and Piper Matrix were available new from the factory with known icing capability, but the Matrix costs about $250,000 more than either the Mooney or SR22T. There are also plenty of used Cessna 210s available with known icing, but the newest of them is now 23 years old!
Many aircraft include anti-icing capability, meant to help you escape inadvertent encounters with icing. Cessna offers heated props on some models, the Beechcraft G36 has a heated prop and Cirrus offered TKS, which streams deicing fluid over the prop and wings. But purposely flying into known icing conditions with any of these aircraft could earn you a conversation with an FAA Safety Inspector or worse.
The Mooney TKS system uses panels located on the wing, horizontal stabilizer, and vertical stabilizer leading edges. There are dual main TKS fluid pumps and dual pumps for the windshield. The pumps can be selected individually between the #1 and #2 pump and you can select normal flow or maximum flow. The prop uses a slinger ring that distributes fluid to each blade and the windshield uses a spray bar. The system has 6.3 gallons of fluid, which will last for up to 2 hours and 30 minutes in normal mode or 1 hour and 15 minutes in maximum mode.
The Mooney factory tells me that the cost for their TKS known Icing System is $49,500 whether you buy it when purchasing a new aircraft or retrofit it later. Apparently, many of their customers who wanted TKS chose the option after it was past the point of installation on the assembly line, so Mooney decided to keep the price the same throughout the process. Nice move. After all, why tick off a customer spending over half a million dollars by charging them a few thousand dollars extra because their plane was already mostly assembled?
Icing has been in my mind, since I briefly picked up trace amounts of ice in a Cirrus SR22T on Sunday. We anticipated it and turned the TKS system to Maximum several minutes before entering a cloud. I’d been curious about how the new FIKI system compares with the older TKS system, so I was happy to run into a few Cirrus employees yesterday and pick their brains about their new FIKI system.
The system is scheduled for certification in the 2nd quarter of 2009. It carries a total of 8 gallons of TKS fluid in two tanks, located in the inboard sections of each wing, which are automatically balanced. TKS panels are installed on the wings, the vertical stabilizer and the elevator. Stall speed is now displayed on the Primary Flight Display and the stall vanes are heated to prevent ice accumulation. Windshield spray nozzles send out a 3 second burst of fluid when activated. The system also includes an icing light to make it easier to determine if ice is accumulating
The Cirrus FIKI offers three modes of operation. Normal mode, designed for trace or light icing, runs for 2 hours and 30 minutes. It operates by cycling on for 30 seconds and off for 90 seconds. High mode, intended for light to moderate icing, provides twice the fluid flow rate of Normal and lasts for 75 minutes and pumps continuously. Max mode (and yes my lawyers are contacting Cirrus about this use of my name) pumps at 4 times the rate of Normal mode for a total of 37 minutes. It is engaged by pushing a button when in either Normal or High mode. This causes the system to pump at a higher rate for 120 seconds before reverting back to Normal or High mode. To continue pumping at Max rates, you’ll need to push the button every 2 minutes (which somehow brings back images of pigeons pushing buttons in the laboratory portion of Barry Schwartz’s Psychology class—my lab partner recently reminded me that I was the one who let the pigeons “fly around the room” for a little freedom and exercise).
So with FIKI, should Cirrus pilots now plan to fly for a couple hours at a time in the ice? Probably not. Icing often occurs in bands about 4,000 feet thick, though the layers can be significantly thicker on occasion. So pilots should plan to be in the ice for perhaps no more than 30 minutes after departure. By that time, they should have used the aircraft’s turbo charging to climb above the icing layer. This should allow the bulk of the en route portion of the flight to be conducted above the ice. Icing should be anticipated again for descent and approach to landing.
FIKI adds a new dimension to flight planning. IFR pilots routinely plan fuel for flying not just to their destination, but also to their alternate airport plus an additional 45 minutes of reserve fuel. Now pilots need to plan their TKS fluid consumption for departure, for descent and arrival, for flight to their alternate airport and then add reserve fluid. Just as you don’t ever want to run out of gas, you won’t want to run out of TKS fluid minutes away from your destination.
As I’ve said before, we live in the most exciting times ever for General Aviation. Innovation is alive and well producing new safety features to keep pilots…alive and well. I’m starting to run out of ideas as to what the industry can add to these airplanes. However, I have no doubt that the engineers at Cirrus and their competitors are hard are work on dozens of innovations. Major new features are often announced at Sun ‘n Fun and Oshkosh, but waiting to find out feels like being a kid on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to see what’s under the tree!