I had a rare chance on wednesday to go up to Cirrus Design and get a tour of
their facilty and see how their aircraft get put together. This was an
extremely fascinating trip. In addition, they just happened to be unveiling
the mockup of their new "personal jet" design to the media on Thursday
(yesterday.) I got to see it a day earlier, even before the folks that have
plunked down $100k to get on the waiting list got to see it ... but all the
employees got to see it before me. The Star Tribune ran a story with an
actual picture of the mockup:
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1275392.html
I have some questions about some of their design choices, but hopefully
they'll be able to work everything out to get a really nice flying package
by the time they go to production (still a couple years away.)
So let's say that we could find out the engine choice and get thrust
numbers. Let's say we know the approximate (or target) weight. Let's say
we know they want it to cruise at about 300 kts, let's say stall speed will
have to be in the neighborhood of 60 kts. Some of these are constrained by
FAA requirements for a single engine aircraft, so we can make pretty good
guesses. I think we could come up with a very plausible flight dynamics
model quite quickly. The jet has a very pleasant outline and now that
they've gone public with the "look", I think it ought to be fair game to
model.
We don't have anything quite like it in our stable. A small, quick
personal jet with slick lines would be a lot of fun! And since it doesn't
actually exist yet, you can WAG at a lot of the specifics and have some fun
with it, or add some of your own personal touch. :-)
Just seemed like a neat/fun idea if someone out there is interested ...
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson - University of Minnesota - FlightGear Project
http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/ http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
http://www.flightgear.org
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