DA42 v Baron

Any DA42 related topics.

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TimS
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by TimS »

Tommy wrote:There is no question, the 62 is one hell of an airplane. I would and actually have considered the 62, however, it just didn't fit my needs (or my wallet) as well as the Aerostar. I would never consider the 42. Again, for me it just didn't cut it in a lot of ways.
Curious on the comparison of Aerostar to 62. What factors had you pick the Aerostar?
Same, what were the negative factors on the 42?

Tim (former Aerostar owner)
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by Tommy »

Tim, I will get back to you a little later, maybe even tomorrow regarding my reasoning as it is quite extensive and my day is pretty full today. That being said, if you still get the AOA (Aerostar Owners Association) magazine my plane is being featured as it was nominated "Queen of the Fleet" at the last AOA owners convention.
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by TimS »

Tommy wrote:Tim, I will get back to you a little later, maybe even tomorrow regarding my reasoning as it is quite extensive and my day is pretty full today. That being said, if you still get the AOA (Aerostar Owners Association) magazine my plane is being featured as it was nominated "Queen of the Fleet" at the last AOA owners convention.
No problem. My membership expired a while back. AOA had some conflict issues between board members and the exec; likely more of a perception problem than a real problem. As a result of how poorly it was handled, I did not renew.

Tim
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by Tommy »

Tim, as I have previously stated, I owned a DA40 for about 7 years and put on about 1,200 hrs on the plane. It was an XlT with G1000, WAAS and synthetic vision. I absolutely loved the plane. I'm based in the Cleveland, Ohio area and have flown the plane out to the Boston area, up and down the East coast to the Florida Keys, out too Colorado; Leadville, Aspen and Telluride. The plane was nothing short of a blast to fly. I had absolute confidence in the avionics and auto pilot systems. It was a piece of cake to fly the plane into any IFR conditions excluding icing obviously. In 1,200 hrs. I never had an auto pilot disconnect. The visibility is unparalleled and the plane was just an absolute joy to fly. As time went on my needs and wants changed. In short, I wanted to go faster and carry more.

I never really had any intentions of leaving the Diamond family of aircraft and initially never considered anything else out side of Diamond. As I mentioned earlier, I was never really happy with the way Diamond Austria approached customer service although I can say I travelled quite often to Diamond London and loved the people there and the way I was treated. In addition, Premier Flight out of KFXE was nothing short of top notch regarding the way I was treated and my plane handled when I went down there for service. Fred, Jeff and the whole crew are a class A act. However, both London and KFXE were driven by what Diamond Austria directed.

When I started to get the itch to want more speed and load I naturally started looking at the 42 and went on to get my multi in a 42. Keep in mind, to me the 40 was the perfect airplane. What I was looking for was an airplane that pretty much had all of the attributes of a 40 except that it would be faster and could carry more.

1.) I wanted a 200 knt. airplane and because I fly at different altitudes for various reasons I wanted 200 kts. +- at all altitudes, not just one altitude. I needed the 50- 60 knot jump in speed. Anything less just wouldn't cut it.

2.) I wanted to be able to load two to four people into the plane with full fuel and not have to tell passengers they are limited to 30 lbs. each in what they can bring in luggage. My passengers are real people and they weigh any where from 170 to 230 lbs. for a man to 120 - 160 lbs. for a woman. When traveling with just my wife which is the case 90% of the time, I need not only room for luggage, I need to be able to throw in a couple of folding bikes. I need volume and I need it distributed in a way that it is useful. While most of my flying is with my wife or by myself, I like having excess useful load while at the same time not having to have to worry about how much weight I am putting into the airplane. I don't like in flight performance degradation that additional weight induces even while being within limits. As a consequence, I want a lot of useful load after full fuel.

After about a 100 hrs. in the 42 this is what I came away with:

Likes:

1.) Very easy to fly, single engine or both. Single engine pretty much a non-event.
2.) You cannot have a bad landing with the trailing link mains, it's just not possible.
3.) You can't get much more simple than the FADEC controls. It almost feels like you're cheating. I felt guilty it was so easy.
4.) From an interior comfort / ergonomic stand point, the long and short of it is you are essentially flying a BMW. The panel layout and control placement is superb. I have yet to see any manufacturer come close to Diamond in this regard.
5.) The 42 sips fuel. What else can I say.
6.) The engines are remarkably quiet.

Dislikes:

1.) The 42 is nose heavy and heavy on the controls. I didn't like that. I wanted light and responsive like the 40.
2.) The engine location totally destroys the view I had become so accustom to in the the 40.
3.) The 42 couldn't even come close to the speeds I was looking for given the altitude parameters I required.
4.) The 42 load carrying capacity was essentially non-existent. You could easily go over gross just adding a third person.
5.) Although the diesels are quiet, they produce a different harmonic. I couldn't get used to it and it actually irritated me on flights over a couple of hours. Avgas engines put me to sleep if I'm not careful. Just me.

Some concerns I had were:

1.) Maintenance. There are not a lot of shops around the country that are adequately trained or equipped to handle diesels. Parts. At the time, everything for diesels came from Austria. An overnight shipment was more than overnight and boy did you pay for it. Not sure what is like now.
2.) At first I thought composites were the greatest thing ever. Over time I found out differently. The bonding inspection on my 40 was a real pain and it is a real issue. Not so with an all aluminum plane. Patching a composite is also more complicated than aluminum. Composites have their own issues. They are not a panacea.
3.) I am not a fan of MT props. Easy to damage hard to fix if they can be fixed.

Cost was definitely an issue regarding the 42. You were almost getting less of an airplane than the 40 when you looked at the whole picture and you were going to pay twice as much for it. I just couldn't justify it. Don't get me wrong, once you get used to flying a twin, it's almost impossible to go back to a single. I just couldn't justify the marginal benefit and tradeoffs that I had to accept in the 42 when compared to the 40.

The 62 I looked at in much the same light as the 42. While there were definite improvements in performance and speed they were not enough to get me to seriously consider the 62. I wanted 200 kts. all the time and the 62 wasn't there. Climbing performance to me was more important close to the ground than at 14,000.' The diesels just were not giving me what I wanted. Wing span is an issue also. The 62 just won't fit in most "T" hangars although I could get over that issue rather quickly with other benefits. Cost was definitely a stumbling block. Hull value seriously affects insurance rates regardless what you fly.

Tim, hopefully I addressed your question about why I did not gravitate towards the 42 or 62 in this post. I will address why I chose the Aerostar 600 over the Diamond family of multi's and other multi's for that matter including the "P" series of Aerostar's in my follow up post.

I fully expect criticism for what I wrote here. What I have presented here is my thought process I went through while deciding what I wanted in a multi engine airplane.
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by TimS »

Tommy,

Based on your requirements, I do not think there is a better plane. Sure you could go the pressurized route to a 601P for minimal increase in operating costs; but it cuts into the useful load. And that may be just marginal enough to take it out of consideration.
Baron, Duke, Navaho, Apache.... none of the others I tested can hit the magical 200 knots and carry four. That is a rare combination in piston land. Back in 2011 when I was upgrading from the SR20; I had your 200 knot, carry four, pressurized, and 1000+ range. Only one piston plane could meet it. The Aerostar.
I no longer have that mission.

Which is why, I am 99% positive I will be buying a DA-42 for my next plane. It hits all my requirements:
1. Wife likes it.
2. Block speed around 150+ knots with most flights around 10K
3. Jet-A (wife is French, and we want to fly to France and around Europe every year for a couple of weeks)
I am getting ready for a job switch, so I need to have that settled with some confidence before I commit to such a major purchase.

Tim
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by Tommy »

Yeah, you kind of hit the nail on the head Tim. Pressurization and turbo benefits would be nice. I just didn't want to pay for the increased maintenance and operating cost or the loss of performance that would have been realized given the "P" aircraft weigh in at 300 to 500 lbs. heavier than a "NA" model. The 700P models are even heavier. Piper did a good job of adding weight to the later models.
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by ultraturtle »

TimS wrote:...Block speed around 150+ knots with most flights around 10K
Closer to 163 kTAS block speed for my frequent 1:19, 215 nm trip at 10,000':
  • Climb 1,000 fpm for 10 minutes @ 120 kIAS (average 130 kTAS), 16.6 gph
    Cruise 59 minutes @ 165 kTAS, 75%, 13.2 gph
    Descent 1,000 fpm 180 kIAS (average 190 kTAS), 75%, 13.2gph
I bump it up to 92% (16.6 gph) and get a block speed close to 177 kTAS when fighting strong headwinds.

These are book values. I'm typically a couple of knots faster, because I'm not at max gross weight.
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by Tommy »

I went back and looked at the 42 and 62 in detail in just about every respect, airframe, power plant, avionics, safety, overall design, price tag etc. I also went through the entire poh. I have time in the 42 and have seen the new 42s. Although I have not seen the 62 in person I am willing to bet it is every bit as impressive as the 42. All of that being said, I have come away with the conclusion that it is one masterful design. As beautiful as it is functional. It all depends on where you are on the airplane need, want, mission, personal preference continuum. No airplane is perfect and every airplane is perfect. It just depends on where you are at, at a specific point in your life. There is no question, they are gorgeous airplanes.
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by ultraturtle »

TimS wrote:...I am 99% positive I will be buying a DA-42 for my next plane. It hits all my requirements...
For some real world numbers that corroborate my above performance claims, feel free to look at my FlightAware data for the past couple of months:
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N42DX
Most flights are well under 10,000', with a couple at 17,000 - 18,000 (my preference when travelling without our pooch). FlightAware always understates my actual block time by several minutes, and but I can assure you that the average is well under the 1:19 calculated book value. I've also never needed more than 35 gallons of fuel for the round trip . That's nearly 13 Air Nautical Miles per Gallon point to point, including fuel for taxi, takeoff, VFR pattern maneuvering, and a couple extended IFR vectors for wrong direction approaches.
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Re: DA42 v Baron

Post by Daneshgari »

Patrick:

I have owned three Barons. My last one was a 2016 B58 fresh out of the factory. It is a great plane and good for low altitude missions. I have since moved to TBM 910 and a new DA42VI (got it on December 15th last year). I simply love the plane. It is closest this to a flying car. It burns around 16gl vs Baron 40. It does around 180Kt vs. Baron's 205. I also, have had five Mooneys. Last one was an acclaim. The main advantage of Baron was its Realstate and space. The main disadvantage of DA42 is its wide wing and not fitting into standard hanger opening. I think depending on your mission and payload and people you want to carry either will do. Just make sure you have hanger space for DA42 and more money for gas for Baron. Have fun, they both are great planes.

Perry
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