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Editor's note: This is a pilot report from my friend David Wihl, a conscientious and superbly trained Cirrus SR22 pilot. The report is based on his experience during a sales demonstration flight in the Cessna Mustang, an aircraft that sells for approximately $2.7 million. The report is augmented by comments from myself, Philip Greenspun, based on his total of 8 hours of flight time in the airplane and some simulator time.
The stair to the cabin looks a little cheap and light. The entrance is a full 22" wide from top to bottom so it's relatively easy to get in and out. There are magnetic locks for the doors and stairs to hold items in place. For fire regulations, the door has a one-handed handle both inside and outside. All exteriors locks are Medeco, so unlike many airplane locks, there is actually some utility in locking the plane.
There is no stair light per se, but the first interior cabin light illuminates at least part of the stair and can be switched on from the ramp. The forward baggage area also has a light that shuts off automatically once the access doors are closed.
Main lights are HID (like the Cirrus). All other exterior lights are the new powerful LEDs that last forever.
Unlike the Phenom which has a single fill point, there are two filling points for the wet wing gas tanks, one on each wing. No gas is stored under the fuselage. Warm oil from the engine heats incoming fuel, eliminating the need for environmentally unfriendly and not easy to obtain Prist.
There are three wing spars, each ground from a single block of aluminum, from 900 lbs down to 80 lbs. The fuselage is laid on top of the spars.
The leading edges have little rubber triangle shapes to help with ice protection. There are rubber boots on the wings, vertical and horizontal stabilizers inflated by bleed air. Under the T-tail are two little strakes to help with stall recovery, which we were able to test later.
A single fire bottle protects both engines, so you'd better hope that only one catches fire per flight.
The panel is well laid out and organized. The beautiful G1000 12" PFD / 15" MFD / 12" PFD are very easy to read. The backup steam gauges are independently powered. The forward and side visibility is better than the Meridian. It's easy to see both wing tips from the cockpit to ensure side clearance on a busy ramp like at Jet Aviation.
[Ed: Cessna claims that the cockpit is more spacious than on the Citation X, which makes sense given that they expect the Mustang to be owner-flown and the X to be flown by a couple of slaves.]
The grey interior on this plane was a little dull. I would certainly choose a different color. The seats were comfortable. The interior mock-up in Wichita has a tan interior, which looks a little nicer, but the passenger area is swathed in undifferentiated plastic that would look at home lining the door of a rental minivan.
[Editor's note: 65-70 dBA is a modern car at highway speeds; 85-90 dBA is a typical turboprop interior; 90-93 dBA is a typical piston airplane in cruise; 6 dBA represents a subjective doubling of sound level; 85 dBA is the level considered hazardous for long-term exposure without hearing protection. The Mustang measured almost the same interior noise as the $8 million CJ3. On the flight out of Wichita, we measured 78 dbA in the cockpit, 75-77 dbA in the back seats.]Pilot ear level during climb: 77 Rear seats during different phases of flights: Taxi: 71/71/70/69 TO: 79/79/77/77 Climb: 81/81/80/81 At FL250: 78/77/80/80 Cruise: 78/78/80/80
The headset plugs are standard - no LEMO [Bose-style]. The microphone bias voltage is not powerful enough to quality as "tip power" for Sennheiser noise-canceling headsets, but it will power Telex 850 ANR headsets, two of which are included with the plane. These provide a limited amount of noise reduction (12 dB claimed) compared to the ANR headsets designed for piston-engine airplanes (50 dB claimed by Telex for its Stratus 50D). In flight, the biggest distraction was hearing the conversation amongst the three passengers, not the plane. There are two 12V outlets, one in the cockpit and one in the cabin. XM Radio is a $5000+ option (see below).
Taxiing is simple. Advance the thrust to get moving and then back to just a bit over idle. The nosewheel steers with your feet, like a piston Cessna. Brakes are not necessary but could be used during taxi. No beta or reverse thrust is available.
The MFD contains Garmin's very clear, big SafeTaxi diagrams.
[Ed: You enter passenger, pilot, baggage, and fuel weights into the MFD. Just like the standard-for-jets Rockwell Collins system, the Garmin calculates the takeoff weight. Unlike the Collins system, which is designed for two professional pilots, the G1000 then does not bother to calculate the V-speeds or zap them over into bugs on the PFD. You, the solo newly-minted jet pilot are supposed to use conventional paper charts from the owner's manual and then enter the speeds one at a time on the PFD. Unlike the original Eclipse avionics design, the G1000 is not smart enough to infer landing field elevation from the flight plan. If you tell the plane that you're flying to Aspen, it becomes an additional task for the pilot to look up the field elevation at Aspen and enter it accurately into the PFD so that the pressurization system operates properly.]
[Ed: In a subsequent simulator ride at Flight Safety, David and I did a bunch of spectacularly dangerous failures with no advance training. We lost an engine shortly after takeoff. Engines caught on fire. My initial take-away from the sim was "I am not ready to fly a jet". The next day, however, I reflected that though we'd both been behind the airplane and had failed to execute all of the procedures correctly, the airplane had still climbed nicely. A competent pilot could have climbed 1500 fpm on one engine instead of the 500-1000 fpm that we managed with our failures to fly the right speeds and configure the aircraft for minimum drag. It was not, however, like in a piston twin, where any deviation from optimum procedure results in the plane sinking rather than climbing. One thing that is particularly helpful in the jet is that there is no need to identify the failed engine. You fly the airplane on instinct and, if you want to adjust the throttle, you move both throttles in sync.]
Oh, and by the way, this was in IMC, with icing potential, and enough turbulence that all the airlines on the frequency were asking for expedited altitude changes. The Mustang was tossed around a little, like light turbulence in the Cirrus, but nothing uncomfortable. There was always the reassurance that there was plenty of headroom to climb in just a few minutes.
We broke out around 22,000' and continued up in turbulence free air to 35,000'. It took 16 minutes to 25,000'. The rate of climb slowed to less than 1000 ft/min above 30,000' but it still took only about 25 minutes including our single engine test and ATC delays. The official number is 18 minutes to 35,000', which I don't doubt.
According to Gordon, the Cessna pilot, there is no "coffin corner" - it's a room. You can do full stalls at 41,000'. The actual ice certification with full rudder deflection was done at maximum altitude.
We then powered back and did a full stall in a clean configuration at around 85 kts. There is no stick shaker, since it isn't necessary. Recovery, without power, took only 500'. We did another for good measure. There was a bit of roll, never beyond rudder authority and recovery in only 200-300' with a bit of power. This 8,000 pound jet with three adults in back stalls as gently as a DA40. Amazing.
ATC called us up to ask what type of Citation we were. "I was wondering when I saw you at 100 kts."
We were over the numbers at 100 kts for the grand finale.
I was truly impressed that the plane allowed me to land so easily on my first try and use so little runway. With anti-skid/anti-lock, I could even have applied full brakes before touchdown and nothing would have happened.
Legally, the minimum runway length for this airplane is 3100' at sea level with ISA. The way that the airplane is certified requires that takeoff distances be calculated using accelerate-to-v1-engine-fails-stop-with-brakes distance. Without an engine failure, the airplane can in fact take off much shorter and certainly lands much shorter, so pilot skill should not be a barrier to operating from fields close to the minimum lengths specified in the book.
Time: 1.3 hrs, Actual 0.2, ILS29@BED
The larger CJs and a lot of high performance piston airplanes offer a "relief tube" that, uh, can take liquid from inside the airplane and dump it outside. The Mustang does not have a relief tube, which is a shame.
The passengers have no display of which station is selected, only up/down buttons. Station selection starts with a passenger yelling up to the pilot "Would you mind switching the XM over to the Jazz section?" The pilot then wades through some menus on the MFD where the genres and station names are displayed. As there is no intercom between the front and back, the pilot yells back "Do you want Real Jazz or Watercolors?" The passenger yells "What's Watercolors?" The pilot explains... The passengers are then zapped into Watercolors. If they start clicking up and down and lose track of how many times they've pressed each button, they have no way of knowing how to get back to Watercolors except by yelling up to the pilot.
The system seems to have been lifted, without modification, from the G1000/XM setup in piston four-seaters. Arguably it makes more sense in a C172 or DA40 for a passenger to be asking for a specific station; all four occupants are connected via intercom and the plane is very likely in day VMC conditions. In a jet certificated for single pilot operation, one wonders what CRM expert decided that the pilot would be capable of managing attitude, power, six individual de-icing switches, ATC, the FMS, and also the XM Radio.
For the price of the XM option, you could buy at least 250 MP3 flash-based players, fill each with eight hours of aviation-themed songs, and give one to each of your first 250 passengers as a souvenir of their journey.
[Ed: The Phenom has a more sophisticated wing than the Mustang. The wing may let the Phenom cheat Physics and fly a larger heavier cabin at higher speeds on a similar fuel burn. Physics will bite back in higher stall speeds and therefore higher landing speeds and therefore longer landing and takeoff rolls. The Phenom's more critical wing is unlikely to forgive ham-fisted handling the way that the Mustang's wing does. My prediction is that the Phenom will be a better plane for passengers and the Mustang will be a better plan for shorter fields and lower time pilots.]
A friend and I had considered a PC-12 as a starter turbine airplane. The PC-12 has amazing short-field capability and payload and we assumed that it would be easier to get insurance for us single-engine piston guys. It turned out that the training and insurance requirements for the PC-12 are very similar to what we would need to transition to the Mustang. The Cessna/FlightSafety qualification and training procedure is more formal and the insurance companies are committed to insuring anyone who gets through it. With the PC-12 they are non-committal. Maybe they will write a policy with 25 hours of dual. Maybe they would like to see 150 hours of dual. They'll get back to us after they've had some more time to think about it and after we've had the plane for awhile...
The manual engine control of the PC-12 is more difficult to operate than the FADEC of the Mustang. Starting in the PC-12 is a bit of an art. Pushing the throttle all the way forward on take-off or go-around should not lead to overtorquing and a $100,000 hot section inspection, as it does in some other airplanes powered by the PT-6, but you're still relying on 1960s-style engine control. Pulling the throttle over the lock and into beta or reverse would probably result in a "departure from controlled flight" as they say at the NTSB.
The PC-12 requires Prist when there is any chance of the fuel getting cold, which is almost always considering that the plane will be climbing into the flight levels.
The PC-12 is a lot noisier inside, especially up front in the pilots' seats. The Mustang surely will feel safer over water, given that it has two engines, but probably the PC-12 is in fact safer for an epic over-water journey due to the options provided by its longer range and endurance.