29 July 2013
Cirrus Aircraft has announced that the Vision SF50 personal jet programme has made what it describes as ‘significant progress toward certification’, including the acquisition of manufacturing equipment to build the new aeroplane. The company confirms that first delivery is still scheduled for late 2015.
The next steps in the Vision SF50 jet programme involve building conforming aircraft for further certification testing and preparing the Cirrus headquarters in Duluth and its manufacturing facility in Grand Forks, N.D., for production.
“This is an exciting time for the Cirrus Vision,” said Dale Klapmeier, CEO and co-founder of Cirrus Aircraft. “The programme continues to progress forward on schedule as we move into building our conforming aircraft. We are taking delivery of some outstanding equipment that will enable us to move into the production phase of the certification process.”
The statement from Cirrus continues, ‘The first verification vehicle, V1, which first flew in July 2008, has been fulfilling its purpose to verify the design of the aircraft and answer specific questions about performance and design to inform building of conforming vehicles. The data generated from V1 was used to finalise the aerodynamic shape (Type Design or TD) and the configuration was frozen in 2010. Some of the important milestones the V1 has met since last year include:
– Pitot and Static sensor location
– Stall speed and Flap refinement
– FADEC to Avionics integration
– Continued natural icing testing
– Training familiarization and marketing demonstration flights
– Trim Optimization
‘In 2014, Cirrus will introduce the next flight test vehicle, the company’s first conforming jet (C0). At this point, the aircraft is built and inspected to production drawings and built on production tooling using production processes.
‘The primary use of the C0 will be performance verification, flying qualities certification and production tooling and process development. The next assembled flight article will be C1. It will be used mainly for aircraft systems development and certification plus refinement of production components and assembly planning.
‘The final flying article will be C2. This aircraft will enter the flight test programme in the latter stages of certification and will reflect, as close as possible, the first production configuration aircraft in both equipment and manufacturing processes.’ <a href=”http://www.cirrusaircraft.com”>Click here for more</a>
