here's my guess: Diesel aircraft engines only make sense if they are big enough to absorb the penalty of certain heavy items that can't really be made smaller than a certain limit. A well designed 150 to 200 HP diesel should weigh the weight of the Austro, otherwise it will fail under the high stres...

With an engine making less power than the IO-360, I wonder how they justified a MTOW of 1280 Kg? My DA-40 XLS is at 1200 Kg. The winglets should in theory add some climb performance and the turbo probably helps close the gap with the Lyco in high density altitude situations. Also, and in fairness t...

there is a very very weird feature in the electric trim setup. if you inadvertently touch one of the two parts of the switch for 3 seconds, the system will disconnect itself, believing it is a trim switch "sticky" failure. as soon as the electric trim system is disconnected, the GFC700 fai...

I've thought about this, also. A fairing at the MLG root would need to have some flex to it across a wide temperature range or it's be forever cracking/breaking off. The trailing edge wing root area inboard of the flaps is another ugly area on our plane. I've thought about coming up with some light...

I just saw on the Diamond Europe web site that they offer an upgrade for existing DA40 TDI to DA40 NG which includes the NG's landing gear and winglets. New MTOM is 1280 Kg. What if we asked them for a quote to upgrade the DA40-180 to 1280 Kg MTOM and winglets? (1280Kg = 2822 lb). The winglets woul...

I just saw on the Diamond Europe web site that they offer an upgrade for existing DA40 TDI to DA40 NG which includes the NG's landing gear and winglets. New MTOM is 1280 Kg. What if we asked them for a quote to upgrade the DA40-180 to 1280 Kg MTOM and winglets? (1280Kg = 2822 lb). The winglets would...

thank you

Where can I get some? How much?

4. Do you all recommend the arctic air cooling unit I see in a few of these? It gets pretty hot here in the summer! I missed this question. While the Diamond is hot on the ground in the summer, I haven't found it much hotter than a C172 or Piper Warrior. In fact, the 2 position canopy of the Diamon...

Just checked thanks. Yes, looks really nice!