Landing Lesson

Landing Cirrus SR20 is quite different from Piper Archer 181.

• The controls feel much more responsive than in Piper. You must be gentle with this airplane. After Piper, I easily over control it when I start flying it until I get comfortable again.
  
• Cirrus landing speed is 1o knots faster than Piper. Piper's landing speed is 70 knots whereas Cirrus's landing speed is 75-80 knots.
• In Cirrus, I sit higher than in Piper so the visual frame of reference is different. It almost looks like you are high when landing.
• I have an interesting issue when landing/flaring. In Cirrus, the instrument panel is slightly turned toward a pilot. So, when visually aligning the airplane with the runway, I tend to align the panel with the runway and so I end up landing slightly cross ways. I tend to turn it right.
• After the flare, you start controlling the airplane on the runway using differential braking. Differential braking is a big difference from Piper. It is much easier to control Piper on the ground because you can turn the nose wheel with the rudder pedals. Not so in Cirrus.