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One type has to be the ‘best’, and at 1/5th of the way to my goal that airplane is Diamond Aircraft’s DA40 – the Diamondstar. It is also very nearly the most expensive airplane I have flown, and the most recent design. Oh, and I have over 100 hours in it, so I am partial in part through familiarity. This is the plane that my brother, an equally obsessed aviator, bought a month or so after he got his ticket. The DA40 is a four place single made of fiberglass. Like the DV20 two seater it has an extremely wasp-waisted look and a t-tail. The tip up canopy and low wing give the plane visibility like the Grumman Yankee, but the entry is far more civilized, with no stepping on the seats. Best of all, the back seat passengers, who I am sure matter, have their very own door. I have never been back there, but it looks quite comfortable. The plane is powered by the fuel injected, 180hp Lycoming IO360, spinning a constant speed two bladed (or three bladed) propeller. The plane is not considered a trainer, though with the G1000 avionics it is about the same price as a brand new Cessna 172. Maybe at over $300k the Cessna is not a trainer anymore either.
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| My brother's Diamondstar with a huge swarm of bees hoping to build a nest. He flies too often for that to work out for them. |
This plane is fast – if you run the engine hard it will do 135 knots all day long. My brother and I flew it across country in three days, and he now makes that trip every summer. The avionics are state of the art, with a huge primary flight display in front of the pilot and an equally large multi function display in front of the right seat. The version I have flown has the KAP140 autopilot, rightly considered a distant second best to the Garmin model. Nevertheless it will fly a coupled approach and with the WAAS upgrade the plane is a very capable light IFR machine. It is really best to stay well away from ice in this slick beast as there are not even options for dealing with inadvertent encounters…unless you think ascending, descending or cursing are effective options. The cockpit is quite roomy and, in sunny southern California, an excellent place to grow tomatoes in the winter. If you can afford this airplane get a few collapsible sun shades to stick to the bubble, it will obscure some of the view, but you will not feel quite so Rudyard Kipling in India.
Flying the DA40 is a total blast. First of all, it has a joystick…yep, no car-like wheel sitting up front, it is fighter pilot all the way. This critter is a blown up DV20 and so it shares the motorglider heritage. This is most easily seen in the very bright lines that DA40 owners paint on the floor of their hangers…the wings are so long that a foot of air between wing and hanger door is the norm. These long wings mean the plane LOVES to fly. If you get fast on final you are going to be touching down well past the Thai restaurant; and you may be thinking about taking another crack at it as you realize 2000 feet of runway are sitting behind you and the wheels are still a few inches above tarmac. Takeoffs, even with 4 full seats and a lot of fuel are fun, with plenty of climb and a deck angle that still leaves you good visibility. The font office is nothing short of intimidating if all you have flown are steam gauges. The G1000 is all glass and though I find it intuitive to use I have watched other folks really lose track of the plane as they tried to figure out how to jump to a new leg on a flight plan, find the local flight service station frequency, or calculate the true airspeed. There are not that many buttons and knobs, but one in particular can be turned, pushed and tilted in any direction. That makes for a steep learning curve and a very fast loss of familiarization. I feel like a year off of steam gauges would not render me useless, but a similar time away from the G1000 and I would probably be better off just flying with my iPad and ignoring all the buttons.
I have had a number of really memorable flights in this airplane and I can’t say that it has even a single bad flight characteristic. I wish the seats leaned back, the trim wheel could be a little larger, and the glare shield could use a better anti-vibration system, but if you can afford this airplane you should get it. It will run lean of peak at 7 gph and 128 knots and seems to cost no more to annual than a newer 172. It is also an intuitive airplane to fly, or at least it was for me. That actually almost got us in real trouble when my brother bought the plane. I drove to Long Beach to meet Robert, the salesman and fly the as yet unpurchased airplane to Santa Monica to pick up my brother. His business and half his life was in Las Vegas at the time and so for tax reasons he would take formal delivery of the plane at North Las Vegas airport. I flew left seat up from Long Beach and between some experience in the DC20, a lot of reading about the G1000, and plain dumb luck I flew the plane pretty well. Robert was particularly impressed with the landing, which saw the wheels touch smoothly down on the 1000 foot markers, exactly where I had intended. Robert had flown with my brother when selling the airplane and recognized that Colin is one of those rare natural aviators who seems to instinctively understand how the plane will behave. When we stopped at the restaurant to pick up Colin Robert and I got out and he walked around to get in the back. I asked whether he wanted to fly right seat and he said that it seemed to him that we were perfectly qualified to take the plane to Vegas.
Perhaps qualified, but were we insured? I did not ask, I do not turn down flight time ever, and certainly not in a plane as nice as this one. So, with Robert, the flight instructor and owner’s representative seated well away from the controls we headed to Vegas. It was a perfect flight. Colin and I fly well together, handing off control with clarity and ease, and picking up the non-flying duties seamlessly. We were in rare form, especially given that neither one of us had 100 hours or more than eight in type. We made not a single bobble or minor error on that flight, we made every radio call, had a clear understanding of engine parameters and kept well ahead of the plane the whole way. Colin took the landing, and as I always do, I followed through. It may be a bit rude, but I almost always follow along as I land in a small plane, I like to feel how other people land and I suppose I am looking out for that short final stroke. Well, it was not too hot and there was not much turbulence, Colin had the plane stable and right on speed as we hit short final. The nose wheel was centered perfectly and he was controlling for the slight right to left crosswind. It was quite mysterious to me then, when he greased the landing that he then started to slowly drift left. It was as though he was forgetting who was in charge of the plane. I called out that he should put in right rudder…more right rudder…then I felt for the right rudder myself. It was against the firewall and we were still doing about 20 mph and slowly turning more to the left. We departed the runway and to slow down Colin whacked one of those little runway lights. Just as he was deciding when to further slow us by whacking one of those great big runway signs the plane came to a stop. Colin immediately goosed the engine a bit in an attempt to get back on the runway, but it was clear something was amiss so he shut down.
Robert was a little bummed. When we exited the airplane it became clear that the left main tire was flat…and the wheel pant was somewhat smashed from Colin’s excellent aim at the runway light. Robert, a little bit downcast, explained that you simply cannot hit the brakes while the flaps are deployed. It will flat spot and burst a tire in a heartbeat because with flaps in there is little weight on the wheels. Since I was running flaps and Colin was running brakes the thought was that we had gotten out of synch. I supposed it was possible, but it sure didn’t feel right. The plane never tracked straight, not from the moment we landed. Colin is not a fellow who leans on the brakes, he flies and lands very smoothly, letting the plane slow down on its own and using the brakes once the plane is going quite slow. But, maybe he had a spasm, or a twitch. In any case, we now had a flat tire and smashed wheel pant on an airplane that Colin did not yet own. The check in his pocket was not actually signed. Hmmm. Well, we called the FBO and the came and towed us off the runway. We headed off to get food and talk about the value of a somewhat dinged up brand new plane.
Robert and Colin worked it all out over lunch and the check changed hands. The FBO put on a new tire and removed both wheel pants. We headed back to the airport to discover something interesting. The AP who had worked on the plane had a souvenir for Colin. An inch long piece of stiff steel wire that was found in the inner tube of the tire. Apparently the brush used to clean the wheel must have shed the wire during the original assembly in Canada. The wire sat there and worked its way from the wheel surface through the inner tube and while we were flying to Vegas all the air was leaking out of the tire through that little hole. Suddenly Robert was not so downcast, Colin was not kicking himself and I was a lot less mystified. All in all Colin did a hell of job missing big, off runway obstacles, and we all agreed that a flat tire on landing is a difficult row to hoe even if you know it is flat. As a grand surprise it is a tall order indeed.
The very best thing about the DA40 is that it has been around for 10 years or so now and there is a reasonable used market. They were made without the G1000 at first and a steam gauge model can be a real bargain. If you are thinking of a later model used 172 or Warrior, or even the retract versions of these, take a flight in the Diamondstar. It is pushing down the used price of metal airplanes and it should be. It is a better airframe, which is not too unexpected since it was designed nearly fifty years after Clyde Cessna put his stamp on the Skyhawk plans.
