New Owner

Any DA40 related topics

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Rich
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Re: New Owner

Post by Rich »

Curses, burned by the internet. I used a similar search and came up with listing showing as composite. Should have gone to the Hartzell catalog. Mea culpa. :scream:

OK, you're screwed. Flying with less fuel is about the only option, save scrounging around and removing some piece of equipment or putting the ballast in anyway. Of course you could gain 30 lbs. :D
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Flyairth
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Re: New Owner

Post by Flyairth »

Thanks, I wasn’t going to correct Rich myself :scratch: ... but I agree the model number is for the aluminum prop which is what they put on. This HAS caused me to notice for the first time that my logs note the change was “in accordance with STC SA02476CH-D” which Hartzell claims is for the composite prop :shock:

Edit: https://hartzellprop.com/products/top-p ... composite/
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Re: New Owner

Post by Boatguy »

pietromarx wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2020 2:29 am
Flyairth wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2020 10:04 pm 2) On the G1000, the "Checklist" soft-key is greyed out. Is it possible and/or useful to enable it and add checklists?
Get the chklist.ace file from Diamond. Put it on to the top SD card in the MFD and leave it there. This will also enable engine data logging.
While this is true, there is no interdependency. You don't need to install the Checklist to get engine logging. Just leave a formatted SD card in the top slot.
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Rich
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Re: New Owner

Post by Rich »

A stab in the dark here about your W&B. My plane has been weighted 4 times: Twice by Diamond at the factory. Twice by 2 different shops here in Oregon.

One of the ones done by Diamond was incorrect. I can't be sure which exactly, but they disagreed on empty CG in a way that both could not be correct.

The third one produced a weight that was so high it was not credible, so I had it reweighed very carefully and it produced results much more in line with what I would expect, knowing what I did about everything that had been added/changed over the years.

This is a long way of saying you might consider getting yours reweighed. I'd also review all the 337's/STC's and any other documents related to W&B through the years. Typical cost for weighing an aircraft such as the DA40 is $250.00.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Soareyes
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Re: New Owner

Post by Soareyes »

Flyairth wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2020 10:04 pm
4) The only dissatisfaction I have with the DA40 (and I knew this going in), is the impossibility of taking 4 adult passengers anywhere. With the 50 gallon tanks, 823 lbs useful load, but the empty CG at 98" there's no configuration with me (145 lbs) in the front seat that accepts 3 adult passengers and any fuel. Is my empty CG unusual, and is there anything I can do about it?
The decreased aft CG range with the 50 gallon tanks is why I ordered my last DA40 with 40 gallon tanks. Also the lighter composite prop and we removed the nose ballast.

With 50 gallon tanks you may already have the nose ballast, a stack of metal plates bolted to the front of the enginge case. The nose ballast is more of a requirement with the 50 gallon tanks than because of the lighter prop. A blog post on the subject: http://da-40.blogspot.com/2013/06/40-gallons-or-50.html

I'm about your size, so were the three adult passengers when we would fly with four people and 40 gallons of fuel from Florida to North Carolina.

I believe the restriction on aft CG with the 50 gal tanks had more to do with the effect on spin recovery when you had more fuel farther out in the wings rather than pitch instability in normal flight, the usual hazard of an overly rearward CG.

The nose ballast won't help your useful load but if you need it to move your CG forward I still have the metal plates in a box in my hangar. All yours just for the shipping.
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pietromarx
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Re: New Owner

Post by pietromarx »

I had my airplane weighed a year or two back. Turns out that the factory just used a number that was the same as a bunch of others. I wanted to get an accurate number after a scary experience in my old Decathlon ... It won't change anything on the DA-40 because the CG range is due to the tanks and spins, but I would just throw in the ballast and take the win.
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Tom-B
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Re: New Owner

Post by Tom-B »

Flyairth,

I like your maintenance spreadsheet. If I could offer two additions they would be:

1. In the annual PowerFlow inspection add lubrication of the slip joints. When I was shopping for my Diamond I was surprised how few planes had any mention of this inspection/lubrication. I discuss the need for this Work with my A&P before the annual.

2. PowerFlow also recommends that we have our props dynamically balanced every 4 years or 1000 hours (see p10 of their instructions for continued airworthiness). My plane started experiencing fluctuating Fuel pressure readings about 10 hours after I had the PowerFlow installed. After getting the prop balanced this issue went away.

Enjoy the new plane!
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OriensFlight
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Re: New Owner

Post by OriensFlight »

Welcome to the club, Ian.

At 145lbs, you’re probably on the lighter side of your typical male pilot. I too have been very careful loading 3 extra people for local scenic flights to the Golden Gate. Trick is to keep the heaviest passenger in the front, and put in no more than 2 hrs of fuel. Also helps to have light friends. Choose the aircraft for your mission, most light 4-seat singles won’t get you very far with four pax, but the two 25 gal tanks are amazing if you decide to cross the country with one pax and bags. Even better is the Diesel 40, which has 40 gal tanks but < 8 gal/hr fuel burn. Then there’s always the DA62 ;-)

Re: MX Spreadsheet, I haven’t looked, but most shops will get a subscription to a program to keep track of that. Find a shop which does a lot of work on Diamonds, or at the very least composite aircraft. I once had a mechanic remove the bonding tubes in the wingtips during upgrade to LEDs, because they “wouldn’t fit”. The mechanic didn’t understand that composite AC needed proper grounding to the wingtips. Before understanding what he had done, my packrat mentally saved me when he asked me if I wanted to hang onto all the ‘weird parts’ he pulled from the plane. Speaking of which, you can lighten the wingtips by ~5lbs by removing the strobe ‘ballast’ with an LED upgrade. Also, if you have the TAS600 mounted in the tail, you might look into moving it to under the left rear pax seat. That’ll move your CG forward a bit.
Hans
N556LU / 40.763 - 2007 DA40 XL G1000 w/WAAS, SVT, TAS & ADS-B @ RAM Aviation in Healdsburg, California
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Re: New Owner

Post by CFIDave »

Ian:
It looks like you have a 2006 DA40:
- Nose ballast (to make back seat loading more useful) didn't become a standard feature until sometime in 2008 for DA40 XLS with MT 3-bladed props, so it's not applicable to your plane. (My early 2008 XLS with MT prop did not have nose ballast.) As was noted by others, you'll just have to put more weight in the front seats, or avoid putting luggage behind the back seats.
- Many DA40s don't have electronic checklist support, depending on which G1000 software is installed in your plane. So even if you put the file on an SDCard, your plane may not display it. But you're not missing much -- in my experience it's not very useful compared to a printed checklist.
- Your 2006 plane (again, based on G1000 software that's installed) likely doesn't have a flight data logging feature, so putting an SDCard into the top MFD slot won't record anything. But as you likely know, you can use an iPad/iPhone running many different aviation apps to record your flight.
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Rich
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Re: New Owner

Post by Rich »

With respect to reweighing, I did some more analysis and conclude that for N40XE the as-delivered CG provided by Diamond was incorrect by likely between .4 and .5 inches too far aft. None of this is a big deal in my case, since the CGs from all of the weighing cases have been < 96 inches. But when you are starting from 98 inches and only have a 2.5 inch window this would make some difference when calculating W&B. Whether it's enough to matter in a given case I couldn't say.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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