Well, finished the tour yesterday, then went out with a friend to tour a retired ore ship here. Joined a group for dinner and never got back to here to post.
Pat started our brief yesterday; then Dale joined in. There are about twenty of us and our group leader is the president of the SR-22 type club. So he , Andy Niemyer, set up the meeting.
What struck me about Pat and Dale and that filtered through the entire organization was how down-to-earth they were. Reasonably humble, talked of how they started in Baraboo near Dells in Wisconsin in a barn and how they eventually decided to be a kit plane manufacturer, then later moved into production. It was a dream they pursued and over the years, it came to work. They just described themselves as ordinary folks that loved planes and had built a kit plane and wanted to design something better. Almost made it sound as if it could have been any of us on here. They talked of how dated the Sky Hawk design was and how they eventually decided to do an updated one and what that meant. Really nice to hear them talk through it. After their talk, were toured the factory and they discussed the assembly process stet-by-step. We went to just after noon and were about to leave when I asked if we were scheduled to tour their new jet. We weren't scheduled to, but the fella in charge of that offered to take a few of us over to look.

He discussed some of the challenges, what they were trying to do and the basic capabilities of the plane. They were setting it up to do known icing testing and he showed how they attached strips of pebble gravel to lift surfaces to see how airflow was affected. Explained the TKS system and that the single engine didn't produce enough bleed air to use it for known icing systems; thus, the move to TKS. Explained how they were trying to keep noise levels down without making the lining on the inside too thick. In the Citation, wind noise is pretty loud at FL250, of course, it can go higher and it gets quieter in the thinner air. Since this will fly lower, wind noise is more of an issue. He ate dinner with our group last night, but I didn't sit near him; so, wasn't able to get to know him better.

While there were many positive things that left a lasting impression, Pat talking about being a young engineer, sleeping in a barn to be near the plane when he joined, and how things evolved was heartwarming and inspiring. At one time he talked about the challenges of the chute system, how he would go to bed after a long day not knowing how in the world they would solve a problem; then, he would have another thought and go in a see if it could work. Of course, they eventually did solve the problem and now have a great system that has made many saves. I think they said there had now been 95 deployments of the chute.

Sorry, I'm doing this on a I-pad while here and am not used to doing much detailed typing on here.

A great tour experience for sure!

I'm dying to know the story! Why the fixed gear and the name?

Dale explained that one day in their early years, they looked at the weather and decided to drive instead of fly. Weather briefing was pretty nasty with storms forecast and low ceilings. Dale said, the entire drive length, all they saw was cirrus clouds! They could have flown. All they talked about on the drive was how they'd rather be flying and how much they wanted to start a company. At some point, between their discussed wants and talking about weather enroute, they decided their new company should be called cirrus in light of those clouds being fair weather flying clouds and how much they wanted to be up that day.
I'm doing this from one listen to their presentation; so, anyone with more perspective, please feel free to expand or correct.

The fixed gear was real interesting and I might not be recalling all the details right, but it essentially went back to their vision of creating a modern day Sky Hawk with state of the art technology. The original bird was designed in 1955, went about three times as fast as one could drive, had many state of the art features when released and was simple to fly.
The Cirrus was about the same speed compared to driving today, has the glass cockpit and other modern features and is simple to operate. A retractable gear is complex, takes extra training and is a bit heavier. When considering all of that and the fact there was't a significant speed loss, they stayed with the fixed gear. Of course, the jet wii have a retractable gear.

Also interesting was their internal discussions ( Dale called the arguments) about whether to provide the ballistic chute. Some folks were dead set for it, and others pretty strongly against.

Thanks for relating those stories.

I find it interesting that the Skyhawk was considered technologically advanced for its time. Seems like all of the technologies involved had been invented by the '30s, with the possible exception of the airfoil they used.

The base price for a 172 in 1955 was $8995 (thanks Wikipedia), which translates into just over $77,000 in today's money (thanks Westegg).

The average new house in 1955 was about $22000 (thanks fiftiesweb), so a Skyhawk was just over 1/3 the cost of an average house. Those numbers have flipped now, and the Cirrus is about 3x the cost of an average new house today.

Dale pointed out some of what was advanced: avionics had some state of Art features, he didn't say anything about wing design. Very interesting point you make about the plane price compared to housing.
Of course, Cirrus has had some problems along the way, but I found the tour and briefing to be very positive. They explained how they weave wire mesh into the composite material to address static and electrical interference issues with the plane. There are still some owner complaints about those issues.

Thank you Dave, fascinating narrative!

You're quite welcome. Hope anyone interested gets a chance to do this.

Another interesting discussion Andy lead after the meeting regarding chute deployment I found fascinating. I've been one of the skeptics; I've never needed a chute (although I jumped in the military). Always thought there would be a very narrow set of events where I would pull the chute or try it. Maybe in a loss of control situation like after a mid air or other very limited circumstance. Then Andy related a story about a fellow that had an engine issue and had to ditch in water. Rather than do a water landing, he pulled the chute and all got into a raft and were picked up. Andy asked why he pulled the chute rather than making the landing. He said, once he pulled the chute, he could concentrate on getting everyone out with the raft and not worry about the landing and problems associated with it. Plane was lost anyway! I was thunderstruck, made perfect sense to me. He was the most capable person on the plane and getting the family out was something he would have had to worry about later if he had to first successfully ditch.
So the window of when to use the chute is expanding with good reason.

While here, I toured the bridge that has a roadway that is lifted for ships to pass under. Very interesting erector set type superstructure. The bridge used to have a trolley type devise the shuttled folks across. Here's a model of the original bridge followed by a pic of it today.

Here's the bridge today with the road raised for a small passing sail boat