RealSimGear Returns to FLYING Magazine
FLYING Magazine’s Sim Lab column has published a firsthand look at Cirrus Aircraft’s Mission Ready program, and the device at the center of the session is a REALSIMGEAR® SR7x Pro.
Written again by aviation journalist and private pilot Sean Siff, the column follows a windy, rainy IFR day at Mike Goulian Aviation’s Cirrus Training Center at Hanscom Field (KBED), outside Boston, where a Cirrus transition student flew a mountain cross country that steadily came apart.
“It’s really about being more prepared before you ever get in the aircraft.”
Marc DeRose, Director of Flight Operations, Mike Goulian Aviation, in FLYING, Oct 2026
What Mission Ready Asks of the Simulator
Mission Ready launched in March and lives inside Cirrus Approach, the manufacturer’s official training curriculum. It is a set of 24 individual cross-country scenarios with both VFR and IFR learning goals, so an instructor can match the scenario to the pilot in front of them. Cirrus Standardized Instructor Pilots build the missions, complete with ATC prompts, decision points and instructor guidance, which takes the work of inventing a scenario off the instructor and leaves them free to brief and teach.
That design rests on a premise Cirrus states plainly: an AATD lets a pilot be taken further into a maneuver or a failure than anyone would sensibly go in the airplane. Here is what the article notes about the SR7x Pro that makes it work:
- A switch-for-switch replica of the SR22 G7, with the Garmin Perspective Touch avionics system
- The same flows and procedures as the real airplane, which is what makes the time loggable
- A commercial X-Plane 12 license, so weather and terrain hold up when the pilot looks outside for landmarks
- Three 55-inch 4K displays giving roughly 180 degrees of peripheral vision
- A CAPS handle that takes the same 45 pounds of pull as the one in the aircraft
The peripheral vision point came up before the scenario even started. On a short test flight, Siff was handed an engine failure after takeoff. He turned his head to the right, kept the runway in sight through the turn, and never had to reach for the sim camera. A small thing, except that reaching for the camera is the moment a pilot stops flying and starts operating software.
Over the Hills
Marc DeRose, Mike Goulian Aviation’s director of flight operations and an experienced CFII and CSIP, briefed the scenario in the classroom first, then ran it from the instructor station. The route left McGhee Tyson Airport (KTYS) in Knoxville for Asheville (KAVL), crossing some of the highest ground in the Appalachians at a planned 9,000 feet.
The failures arrived in the order a real day would deal them, not the order a checklist would:
- An alternator fault first, while the conversation was still relaxed
- Then the loss of the MFD
- Then yellow CAS messages, pushing the student deeper into the SR22’s abnormal procedures
- Then a slow, cascading loss of engine power
- Layered with ATC course corrections that kept adding to his task load
By the time he reached above his right shoulder for the CAPS handle, the airplane had already sunk below the 600-foot agl minimum for deployment. The chute never got the altitude it needed.
DeRose stayed quiet through most of it, other than acting as ATC, and let the student work the problem himself. Siff rates the debrief that followed as one of the most effective parts of the whole scenario.
None of that sequence could be flown in an airplane. A partial power loss over mountains, run all the way to its conclusion, discussed at length, and available again next month. That is the whole case for a device that behaves like the aircraft.
The Room Matters as Much as the Hardware
One detail is worth passing on to every flight school weighing a simulator purchase. Mike Goulian Aviation did not put the SR7x in a spare corner. Both of its Massachusetts locations have purpose-built sim rooms with blackout window blinds, dimmable ceiling lights and dark wall paint, built to strip out distractions so the pilot in the seat stays in the scenario.
Siff also notes that their instructors have been pooling SR platform knowledge and feeding it back to us to help develop the platform. That is how most of our best work gets done, and we are grateful for it.
Ready to Fly a Mission Ready Scenario?
The route in is short:
- Contact your local Cirrus Training Center and ask whether it has an AATD booking Mission Ready scenarios
- Open a complimentary Cirrus Approach account, which is all the courseware requires
- Instructor and simulator time are billed separately by the training center
- Non-Cirrus pilots can book a Mission Ready session too
And if you run a training center, or you fly an SR and would rather not wait for an open booking, the SR7x Pro is the device Siff flew. Our Cirrus lineup runs from a desktop console through FAA approved AATDs, so the avionics and the flows stay the same as you move up.
→ View the SR7x Pro Package
→ Or explore our Cirrus simulator lineup
You can read Sean Siff’s full column at FLYING Magazine. It first appeared in the August issue (No. 973) of the print edition.
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RealSimGear builds its hardware and software to emulate the real aircraft as closely as possible, but slight differences may exist between the simulated and the real systems. Mission Ready and Cirrus Approach are programs of Cirrus Aircraft. Instructor and simulator rental costs are set by each training center.
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