Thanks, excellent response and I agree.
In my experiences in aviation (except by a few vocal idiots on APC, most of whom are not professionals) almost everybody is extremely professional and "nice" to fellow pilots on the ground and especially in the air, as we should be. A few moments of his time would have been well-invested to help the lady in the controller's mind, and it would be harsh to forcibly tell her to exit bravo etc... I have certainly heard more clueless types on the air.
Perhaps he should have seen the incompetence, but if he wasn't watching the turns he might have assumed it was his own doing or she just was brining up a plate for 35 or something for a second and had to look down.
Ironically, a LESS competent tower controller may have had a better outcome as she would have been given a long pattern and not tried to help her as much. This guy was really my style, just trying to help her get down in creative ways and recognizing what a sharp GA pilot should be able to do.
If you hand me my 182 in flight without ASI or manifold I can probably tell you within 10 kts how fast I am going. Even without a stall horn, the aircraft really speaks to you when you are getting slow - the control feel, the sounds, etc. There is almost ALWAYS a large lift reserve (e.g. pull up, get more lift) in flight conditions. It is really easy to bleed off the excess energy with slip or flaps. With the Cirrus, none of those is true.
You need to nail speeds farther out, and not rely on lift reserve if you have a gust or need to arrest a high sink rate. I feel very comfortable making some loading maneuvers in the pattern in my plane, but with a cirrus you run the risk of this classic video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nm_hoHhbFo
I agree with you. Same here, around 10 hours IIRC in the cirrus (I'll go back and look.) The plane is not for the 40 hour per year pilot, or somebody that doesn't want to take the time to understand how a plane flies.
The SR20 is substantially less than $800,000. When I was shopping you could get it well equipped for less than half of that. You may be thinking of the SR22.