Mine too but that's not the point.

The point is "how much faster would your SR22T be if it were retract?"

There are many more differences to those airframes than retractable gear.

For example, how much faster would the A36TN be if it were made of composite?

if it was simply the same shape, but composite rather than metal?
no speed difference.

There's nothing inherently "faster" about composite than metal.
Yes there are no rivets, big deal, the bonanza has mostly flush rivets anyway, and even the dome head rivets really don't add any appreciable drag.

What composite gives you is the ability to make different shapes.
Specifically, you can contour more accurately for optimal airflow and reduce drag etc.

so making the bonanza out of composite does not help
making a NEW airplane out of composite, BASED on the bonanza design
would be very nice.

I have never liked the looks of the Cirrus mainly because of the landing gear. It looks very "152"ish. Even most birds retract their feet when they fly.

A real airplane has retractable landing gear!

Back to you Ben:

I think because:

1. It weighs less so useful load is enhanced.
2. It eliminates a lot of potential accidents (gear ups)
3. The Cirrus wing is pretty thin for aerodynamic reasons and retractable gear would have been a significant challenge.
4. Fixed gear costs less. I don't know that that's a particularly big deal now with $750k airframes but 12 years ago I think it was.
5. It's fast enough. In other words it's as fast, close to as fast, or faster, than its competitors.

It doesn't help the plane's looks I agree. But it looks good enough.

Someone else said "real planes have retractable gear" which is, of course, incorrect. Real planes have two wings and the little wheel is in the back.

That's very difficult to answer unless you have the wind tunnel data with / without landing gear. Everyone here can offer a guess but not really have an accurate answer. Very, very good landing gear designs with optimal wheel fairings do not have a much drag as you might think. I've seen data to show fixed gear drag contribution in the 5-10% range. I worked for Cirrus but don't have the data to show this actual difference and don't know that it even exists. My best guess is that in the flight regime the SR20/SR22 operate that it is probably in the 5-15 kt range.

In the early days of the design, they did no wind tunnel testing - it was all computer simulation back then. I don't recall the topic of fixed vs. retract ever even coming up. It was conceived all along to be a fixed gear design for all the reasons mentioned: simplicity, weight, cost.

Why bother? they didn't even care to add a steering mechanism which would add complexity, weight and additional drag!

The gear is also quite important in a landing under parachute. There have been very few significant injuries from chute landings, but one of the significant ones was from a guy who landed in water where the gear had no shock absorber function.

That's a very good point as well. The gear play a significant role in energy absorption during a CAPS event.

My first ride in a Cirrus ended with the pilot dropping it in (stall...like we're not flying any more Willis kinda stall) from about 5 feet at night. I expected a few compressed discs and to see the wheels punch through the wings. To my surprise, the gear sucked it all up and made it feel good.

There would have been broken parts in any other aircraft I've flown. I bet the wheel pants touched the wings.

When the Cirrus first launched every magazine article touched on the fixed-gear question. Cirrus' folks were quoted as saying that they looking into a retract design and it added negligible speed, or the weight and structural considerations actually slowed the airplane down.

I'll be somewhat unhelpful here in my laziness with regards to research, but you'll have to Google those articles for yourselves.

Isn't the seat pan/pad also designed to minimize compressive spinal injuries from chute landings?



My first ride in a Cirrus ended with the pilot dropping it in (stall...like we're not flying any more Willis kinda stall) from about 5 feet at night. I expected a few compressed discs and to see the wheels punch through the wings. To my surprise, the gear sucked it all up and made it feel good.

There would have been broken parts in any other aircraft I've flown. I bet the wheel pants touched the wings.

Yes - the seats are dynamically tested seats to 26g. However, the landing gear certainly help absorb energy as well.

It has to be more than 5 knots going from fixed to retract. I went from a 180HP Cherokee to a 180HP Arrow, and my cruise speed is 15 knots faster.

That's true, but the Cherokee is already a slab-bottomed aluminum fuse with cavernous Hershey-bar wings and small gas tanks making it easy to hide the wheels.

Not really an apples-to-apples comparison.