diamondaviators.net

Hello everyone,

I work for CAV Ice Protection, the company responsible for the design and manufacture of the TKS Ice Protection System on the Diamond DA42 and DA62. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have regarding the system and I'll do my best to answer. You can also find out more information and contact us through our website. In addition, I plan to share TKS maintenance tips which will hopefully be beneficial to you and mean a long lifespan for your plane.

Best regards,

Joel Jackson
CAV Ice Protection

Welcome,

I just had to replace my controller. How common of an occurrence is that? Granted the system is 11 years old. Are there any other components I should be looking at more closely?

When the controller went bad the TKS pump would shut down. Ended up dumping 5.5 gallons of TKS before I could get on the ground.

Otherwise the system as worked great.

jon1746 wrote:Welcome,

I just had to replace my controller. How common of an occurrence is that? Granted the system is 11 years old. Are there any other components I should be looking at more closely?

When the controller went bad the TKS pump would shut down. Ended up dumping 5.5 gallons of TKS before I could get on the ground.

Otherwise the system as worked great.

Thank you for the welcome and questions, Jon.

Your message was forwarded to our Repair Station Manager who says, "The controller isn’t a high fail item and, in most cases when it does fail, can be sent in for repair. As for other items to look for: with a system that is 10 years old I would venture to say the metering pumps could use overhaul due to the age of the rubber seal. The seal may start leaking air into the system in pumps as early as 5 years old. A pump that has air being drawn in while it is running is slowly filling the panels with air, which will eventually have the panel air locked and need to be purged. Hope this answers your questions."

Thanks for insight. I will probably have them overhauled this spring in annual.

I have a question - is there anyway you can save us the shipping hit - which ends up being close to 100% of the cost of the fluid product? For example instead of shipping it to my house in small batches at a great cost due to hazmat, could you somehow ship it to a chemical business as part of larger shipments. One aspect - if I buy online and hit buy now - it comes to me quickly - and to my house - but usually I would be just as happy to buy it 2 months ahead of time, and perhaps somewhere that I can access it by driving 20 or 30 miles to some chemical business?

Erik wrote:I have a question - is there anyway you can save us the shipping hit - which ends up being close to 100% of the cost of the fluid product? For example instead of shipping it to my house in small batches at a great cost due to hazmat, could you somehow ship it to a chemical business as part of larger shipments. One aspect - if I buy online and hit buy now - it comes to me quickly - and to my house - but usually I would be just as happy to buy it 2 months ahead of time, and perhaps somewhere that I can access it by driving 20 or 30 miles to some chemical business?

Hi Erik, and thanks for your question.

It is possible to order CAV Ice Protection TKS DTD 406B fluid within the contiguous United States and ship to either a commercial or residential address. Only commercial orders are able to be ordered online. Residential orders can be made by calling our Parts department. We have a direct relationship with a chemical supplier in St. Louis, and that is the extent. In my experience, we shipped TKS fluid to a customer's local airport where the customer made delivery arrangements with the airport and had it transported to their hangar.

To answer your question better, what amount of TKS fluid would you like to order, and where are you located?

How about an STC installation for the DA40?

Hi Joel and thanks for visiting us. I also got your PM. FYI the request I had sent you should go to Diamond Canada and not Austria since the Austrians are no longer responsible for the DA40.

Please help us understand how your company views the DA40 customer base (about 2000 aircraft) and if/how you would approach an STC for the DA40. Would you only do it with Diamond, with a third party or on your own?
As I wrote to you previously, I would encourage some market research on prop de-icing only and a full blown airframe de-ice solution. I believe that a prop de-ice retrofit STC could appeal to quite a few DA40 owners from a cost/benefit perspective.

Antoine wrote:Hi Joel and thanks for visiting us. I also got your PM. FYI the request I had sent you should go to Diamond Canada and not Austria since the Austrians are no longer responsible for the DA40.

Please help us understand how your company views the DA40 customer base (about 2000 aircraft) and if/how you would approach an STC for the DA40. Would you only do it with Diamond, with a third party or on your own?
As I wrote to you previously, I would encourage some market research on prop de-icing only and a full blown airframe de-ice solution. I believe that a prop de-ice retrofit STC could appeal to quite a few DA40 owners from a cost/benefit perspective.

I'll confirm that - it was one of the major reasons why I moved away from the DA40 to a tks equipped Mooney.

I believe Antoine is correct. And it does not need to be a FIKI solution. I would have paid $15k to add the system to my DA40 when I was flying it, without blinking. I encountered ice twice, a surprise both times. I would have just flicked the switch before hitting the clouds and dumped a little sugar booze into the clouds on my way up or down. Even with the DA42 I will not launch into known ice, it's not that sort of system. (After having read the accident report for the TBM700 over Atlantic City I'm not sure I'd launch anything but a jet into icing conditions.)