Today, I wanted to pick up the Cirrus from my mechanic after some routine maintenance. The plan was a VERY simple 24nm flight from Danbury, CT to Poughkeepsie, NY. You can see the planned route below:
But the weather wasn’t very good … Not terrible, not dangerous, just light rain and low ceilings in both DXR and POU.
Shortly after takeoff, I climbed to ~ 1200 FT and entered the clouds. From that point on, I found the skies and the NY Approach ATC frequency busier than ever. Due to other commercial traffic, I got a couple of vectors and reroutes… But eventually, I made it to Poughkeepsie. where the weather was a little worse than Danbury:
Luckily, POU is a fantastic airport with lots of instrument approaches. I came in on the RNAV GPS 06, which had an LPV minimums of 503 FT. Luckily I broke out of the clouds @ ~ 560 FT and was greeted by a runway that was lit up like a Xmas tree! This turned out to be the perfect real world use case for the amazing Perspective Plus avionics in the new Cirrus!!
You can see what I saw from the cockpit in this short video:
So in the end, the simple, straight 24nm trip, turned into this:
After this flight, I am really starting to feel comfortable with the new avionics!
Stay tuned as I have many more flights/videos coming on My New Youtube Channel !
Cheers,
== T.J.==