Aircraft Optimized For Northern Latitudes

04.01.06 'Special' Edition: After a whole lifetime of living in the snowbound North Central US, the Klapmeier brothers have finally introduced an airplane for the winter conditions in their home stomping grounds (as in stomping your feet to try to get circulation back), Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Integrated Snowplow

The first thing you notice about the SP is its three integrated snowplows. They're modeled on the gigantic plows used in the 19th and 20th Centuries on the great railway lines of the north and west, "only much smaller," said company visionary Alan Klapmeier.

"It's all part of our vision of safety through innovation," brother Dale, who was recently named to the newly created title of Cirrus Curmudgeon, said. The aircraft clears its own runway, making concern over snow-contaminated runways a thing of the past.

"The best thing is that, because we found that the plows added five percent drag in powder and nine percent in packed, wet snow, Alan finally gave me the go-ahead to add a little more power." The SP's unique four-bladed prop is driven by an innovative IO-720-TDT which contains twin dual turbochargers. "Each cylinder bank has one great big turbo to cram it full of air, and one little one to spin up fast so you don't notice the turbo lag of the big one," he said. "I'm not really sure what the rate of climb is. I was supposed to trip the stopwatch at 20,000 feet but I was trying to stop the nosebleed and missed my hack."

"You can make a buck by renting it out to clear taxiways and ramps, too... as long as you don't rent it 'wet,' which could be financially ruinous."

"And you don't need to use the snowplows, actually. Just taxi to the end of the ramp and run it up to 1900 RPM in coarse pitch, and you'll clear the snow from the ramp behind you, and the grass beyond. We were running it up to 2100, but that erodes too much of the topsoil, and a smart aleck in Twin Cities Approach keeps cautioning 757s about our wake turbulence."

IKEA Interior, Fisher Plow

While the other Cirrus models' Lexus-like interior has been universally praised, the SP has had a complete overhaul by the Danish furniture giant IKEA.

While Cirrus came up with the idea for the snowplow, they didn't think there was any percentage in reinventing the wheel, or the blade, in this case. They worked closely with snowplow experts Fisher Engineering for a (or three) scaled-down copy of the Fisher EZ-V plow. The EZ controls are permanently installed in the cabin, but the plows themselves are removable by the pilot "in less than two minutes... just like our truck plows," a Fisher spokesman said. "This is our first aircraft product, but it won't be our last."

Options and Prices

The SP doesn't come cheap -- the SP22 version begins at over $389,000 and the IO-720-TDT powered SP24, which is expected to garner the bulk of the sales, begins at over $469,000. And that's before you add popular options like the heated alpaca-fur seats, ice-prevention equipment and a wood-burning Jotul preheater. But seven SPs were ordered the very day of the announcement.

"I plan to put one on leaseback at International Falls, yah," said Ole Svensson. "I reckon she can pay for herself, she can."

"Oh, yah," his cousin Sven Olsson agreed.

"We've been needing this plane for a long time." Sven especially likes the wolves-fur trim on the canopy of the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System. "Yah, for survival, if you come down in a wasteland like Yukon Territory or Hollywood. Plus, anything that thins out the wolves is good for the elk, yah."

Opposition Rises, Too

Not everyone is a fan of the new SP. In Madison, a spokeshuman ("that's the term we use, live with it") for Students for Sustainable Protest was quick to condemn the new Cirrus. "It like, digs up the snow that like Gaia laid down, and that's a... what do we call it... bummer, dude. Like, grooves in the snow are not groovy. Dig? And it burns fossil fuel. How does that make the poor fossils feel?" The spokeshuman indicated, though, that Students for Sustainable Protest would not protest in Cirrus's home base, Duluth. "There all totally square up there, and there's, like, no good weed." Asked to describe the membership of SfSP, the spokeshuman said the organization comprised "two or three students, and about all us professors."

The SPs feature custom graphics of diagonal yellow and black stripes, and extra flashing yellow strobes.

FMI: www.cirrusdesign.com