Irish_Armada
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Irish Armada
DA40's selling for under $100k
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Anything someone is foolish enough to leave the keys unattended for. PA30, PA24-260, PA28, PA34, PA32, C172, C152, C150, M20C, Grumman Yankee...... For my daily use I have a Warrior, the others I just grab if I have to go somewhere and a plane needs some exercise (I know some folks with a speech impediment, when they see a good deal they can't say 'No', as a result they end up with extra airplanes).
A Stinson or a Viking are nice pieces of classic furniture, good as a hobby if you have a hangar available and you are either an A&P yourself or you have some incriminating information on one that you can use to coerce himto work for you.
There are like 3 A&Ps left who can splice a piece of plywood, 2 of them are in 'memory care' and the 3rd is starting to forget where his keys are. Through my proximity to Alexandria, there are plenty of those wood-crates around, when they go on the market, even a 100hr engine doesn't sell them in less than a year.
There is a reason you dont see either Vikings or Stinsons operated in rental fleets. Plenty of Diamonds though.
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Experimental
Completely different mission
Not everybody wants to be a classic aircraft caretaker.
10 knots slower on 50% higher fuel burn... What's not to love? If you don't need to haul the load, why would you spend the extra $$$ on fuel and maintenance?
Again, older aircraft and the issues that come along with that. Not to mention, it won't have near the view that you get in the DA40.
Lots of fun for sure, but again a completely different mission and only 2 seats.
The DA40 fits the same type of mission as the 180hp PA28's, but does it 30 knots faster on the same fuel burn in a much better-looking airplane with a much better view.
Irish_Armada
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Exactly what made me ponder all this in the first place. Comparing apples to apples, the DA40 design should win. Problem was, I always assumed it was apples to oranges because DA40's were so danged expensive. But now I can only find about two Cessna 172 SPs (which is about as equivalent a plane as you can get to the DA40, including similar model years, etc) that are less than $100K ... the rest are near or well above. So the price point is about equal on recent model DA40's and C172s. If I'm John Q. Buyer facing a choice between a DA40 and a similarly equipped C172, at equal price, why on earth would I go with the C172? Of course Cessna has a much longer legacy, more goodwill, but you get the idea. So when I saw the DA40's at the same price as similarly equipped C172s, it caught my attention...
The reason to go for the 172 would be if you are a flight school and instruction is billed by the hour, not the mile. 172s are a commodity like Steinway pianos or pork bellies, you need to sell it, there is 'liquidity' in that market that you wont find in a exotic.
Early SR20s seem to be hitting the low 100s these days as well. They have the repack done and some had recent engine overhauls (it seems to take about 300hrs until people decide that they need to upgrade). Not everyone likes the Diamond bubble canopy and center stick, performance wise the 200hp cirrus and the 180hp Diamond are probably similar.
The Diamond has the advantage of an enviable accident record. The Cirrus has, err, a bit of a reputation.
If you compare the DA40 and the SR20 and integrate fleet size over the years, that difference evens out quite some ways.
MachFly
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I disagree with that. For example there were two SR20 and two DA40 midair collisions in the past 10 years, both times everyone in the DA40s survived and both times everyone in the SR20s did not. Another thing you want to look it when was the last time you saw a Diamond catching fire? Cirrus' on the other hand tend to do that every now and then.
Here I took a few charts from Diamond's site:
http://www.diamondaircraft.com/why/safety.php
Now I am not saying that Cirrus' are dangerous in any way, I'm just saying that Diamonds are a lot safer.
MachFly
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Huh?
There's easily a 10-15 knot difference between the oldest and newest models due to changes in aerodynamics, different propeller models, PowerFlow exhaust, etc.
What changed in aerodynamics (not counting the DA40 NG)? As far as I know all Lycoming 40s have the same wing and tail.
I only flew the 2004 model and that was 3 years ago so perhaps I forgot a few things.
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NineThreeKilo
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Diamonds, Cirrus, Bonzs = weekend warriors IMO.
PA-anything other then 18 = weekend warrior or student
You will find professional pilots will tend to own 40s era or aerobatic planes as their "fun" planes. I log about 100-120hrs a month (most of which turbine) and I rock a Stinson, I've owned her for about 4 years now, really no problems, average annual comes in at under 900 bucks.
I thought about what my ideal plane would be (thinking if I would keep my Stinson), well the only other plane that appealed to me was a NXT Nemesis with a turbine conversion, or a turbine thunder mustang, both of which are single or two seaters, both of which well into the hundred thousand dollar range...
In the end of the day my Stinson is a true 4 seater, flys like a caddy, slips like a rock, looks great at the ramp and costs little in mx, for a guy that flys for a living (6 days a week) I cant think of a better personal plane then my 40s era Stinson.
PA-anything other then 18 = weekend warrior or student
You will find professional pilots will tend to own 40s era or aerobatic planes as their "fun" planes. I log about 100-120hrs a month (most of which turbine) and I rock a Stinson, I've owned her for about 4 years now, really no problems, average annual comes in at under 900 bucks.
I thought about what my ideal plane would be (thinking if I would keep my Stinson), well the only other plane that appealed to me was a NXT Nemesis with a turbine conversion, or a turbine thunder mustang, both of which are single or two seaters, both of which well into the hundred thousand dollar range...
In the end of the day my Stinson is a true 4 seater, flys like a caddy, slips like a rock, looks great at the ramp and costs little in mx, for a guy that flys for a living (6 days a week) I cant think of a better personal plane then my 40s era Stinson.
There are some curious choices on how those 'statistics' are reported, if you move the reporting frame back or forth a little bit and limit some of the comparisons, you can arrive at significantly different 'data'. There have also been a number of DA40 fatals since 2008 (1 each in 2009, 2010 and 2011) , through some quirks in the ntsb database, they dont show up if you define your search criteria too narrowly. In the end, the DA40 will probably be the safer plane, given some of the design choices (low stall speed), that is not very suprising.
My mentioning of the SR20 was not to indicate a preference for that plane, just another example of where used values for early 2000 planes are. If 99k buys you a DA40 with runout/timeout engine and no autopilot, 115k buys you a SR20 with a 300hr engine, Stec30 w. alt and a ginormous MFD.
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flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Mainly the landing gear. Aerodynamics relates to a lot more than the wing and tail - Anything that causes drag that you can tuck inside a fairing or inside the plane entirely will help.
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Not nearly as much as you'd think. We talked about this in another thread, and I debunked both the "it's due to the fleet size" and "Cirruses fly more" myths. Yes, it does even things out somewhat (it has to, since there are more Cirri) but per airplane and per flight hour, the Diamond is still a much safer aircraft... Or it's flown by safer pilots.
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
The Diamond isn't exactly "exotic". If you look at the FAA registry, Diamond is the 11th-largest manufacturer of four-seat single-engine piston-powered airplanes. (The first 10: Cessna, Piper, Beech, Mooney, Cirrus, Stinson, Bellanca, Grumman, Maule, Mooney.) Cessna is bigger than the next seven combined. There are about 6 times as many Cirri (counting both the SR20 and SR22) as there are DA40's.
If you're a small flight school, a DA40 isn't a bad idea - It's a very forgiving aircraft and in some ways a better trainer than a 172, but it's fast enough that people won't necessarily go running off to find something else when they're done with their private. It's got good ramp appeal as well, something that is important to new students whether it should be or not.
Gary F
Final Approach
That's probably the biggest reason new DA40s are faster. The newer DA40s have smaller tires and fairings as well as a nose gear strut fairing.
The data you need for both aircraft is deeper than what can be derived from the standard publicly available data. The last time I looked at it, the overall fleet sizes were pretty even (within 2-3% of each other).
You need:
- Fleet size per year from 1998 to 2012 per type (available from GAMA reports)
- hours flown per type per year: (not really available beyond extrapolation from hours of aircraft on the market together with overall trends like avgas consumption FAA reported landings and )
- accident numbers per type: (pretty much available)
Someone smarter than me could run the statistical tests, but the underlying data make this a difficult task and you are going to end up with large margins of error.
Reasons why this is difficult:
- you are looking at rare events in small inhomogenous populations.
- early on (until 2004), the size of the SR20 fleet was multiples of the size of the DA40 fleet.
- since 2008, the number of hours flown in GA has decreased across the board, no reason to believe that this is not the case for the SR20 and DA40 fleet.
As statistical problems go, this is similar to comparing the efficacy of two drugs for a rare disease over the course of 15 years with one drug only having entered the market 5 years in and the underlying disease becoming less common due to societal factors beyond the scope of the study. The 'data' on the website of one drug manufacturer look at a single reference timeframe that includes 4 years of data for one drug and 10 years of data for the other.
Given the ##%%% raw data, you are going to get ##%%% statistics, if looked at with a rigorous statistical approach, there would probably be differences between the two airframes, I doubt they would rise to the level of statistical significance. And as 80% of aviation accidents are pilot related, the significance of any difference between the airframes is questionable to start with.
I never said your girlfriend is fat.
I like the plane, relative to a Piper Warrior or a C172, it is just an uncommon plane and the market is smaller.
NineThreeKilo
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They are both the same class of aircraft, the Diamonds are a little more tailored to the flight training demographic, but both are basic planes, no gotchas, not rocketships. The cause for the higher fatalities in the cirrus is just due the cirrus being more popular with the rich 60hr wonders who buy them and crash them.
For a flight school, I would never own ether of those aircraft, I'd get some 150s and carbed 172s, why have the overhead for a plane that is going to be doing T&Gs and small x-countries it's whole life? After all a 70s 172 will your do your student x-countries and first solo just as well as a 100k cirrus/diamond.
For a flight school, I would never own ether of those aircraft, I'd get some 150s and carbed 172s, why have the overhead for a plane that is going to be doing T&Gs and small x-countries it's whole life? After all a 70s 172 will your do your student x-countries and first solo just as well as a 100k cirrus/diamond.
The ratty state of the trainer and rental fleet is one of the reasons for the high wash-out rate between people who start primary training and the ones who eventually end up as owners, shareholders or club-members.
Occasionally I fly a 2000 172 with KAP140, HSI and the standard silver crown stack. Compared with the 70s era green on puke colored rental mules with flaky hand-cranked ARC or Narco radios, there is simply no comparison. Sure, you can put a garmin stack, one-piece panel and fresh P&I into a '77 with HAD engine, but once y ou are done sprucing it up, your cost is going to be the same as a post-restart model. Now that the price gradient between a early DA40, post 99 172 and early SR20 is pretty reasonable, putting a 'modern plane' on the line can make sense. Not sure a SR20 would be first choice for a primary trainer, for rentals after folks get their rating and as instrument trainer they are a good option.
I am just starting to get a bit into Golf (to keep up with my kids), general aviation has a lot to learn when it comes to recruitment and retention. 'It may be sh@@@ but it's good enough for the students' is not an attitude I have experienced at the driving range or the course.
Gary F
Final Approach
Exactly. I was about to reply to that post and you beat me to it. There are a lot of people (including physicians) with the means to learn to fly where a beat up 172 will just not be good enough. Even an older DA40 is a big improvement over the typical trainer.
They are fiberglass are they not? A fiberglass hull kept in a hangar and well waxed can last a very long time through best I can tell an infinite cycles. I am not 100% sold on pure CF structures, but eventually they'll get me to change my mind. From the looks of the goings on on the Americas Cup front, there's still room for improvement in either material or engineering.
Irish_Armada
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Exactly! I wish this were happening more. Diamonds for rent are few and far between, and as someone mentioned earlier, the whole "presence" on the airfield factor is not to be taken lightly when considering what might attract would-be pilots-in-training. The bubble canopy and center-stick setup on the DA40 seems like it would be a big draw for those fighter pilot wannabe kids who are just starting to think about flight training and the world of aviation. Maybe enough to keep them around past solo too.
Cirrus would obviously be sexier than the average Cessna as well. I've got much love for the 172's, but flight schools need to mix it up a bit more perhaps...
nddons
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Agreed. That's why I learned in a Symphony vs some ancient 172s. It was cleaner, not a rats nest, and had dual G430s.
MachFly
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Do you guys have a picture or show the difference by any chance?
How much faster are the new 40s?
Wingsofglass
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What I always find striking about the few DA40 fatals is the type of accident. Of the three you mention, 1 is a suspected suicide (final report not out), 1 is a CFIT accident on a failed instrument approach by a pilot who who was flying all day and 1 is the result of flying a plane with no icing capabilities into one of the worst blizzards of a bad winter. So as with most accidents it's almost always pilot error. But with the DA40 fatals it seems like they are all egregious pilot error. There are no loss of control fatals in IMC, no takeoff or landing fatals and no stall spins either.
MachFly
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Good point.
NineThreeKilo
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If you equate the trendiness of the interior to the airworthiness of the craft.. well if you wash out because of a ugly interior... thats good for GA, as the people who only fly trendy planes tend to be the ones I ready about lawn-darting in the NTSB reports
And those folks will never see the tuck and roll leather interior of my personal plane, if you dont understand what makes a plane, or for that matter an aviator, you have no business in my skies IMO.
Gary F
Final Approach
The 80% part is true but some airplanes seem to be a bit more prone to pilot error (less forgiving) than others. My theory is that the side stick might be more susceptible to over-control under certain circumstances than a center stick. Add a higher stall speed and there might be more of a problem if you get too low and slow in a Cirrus.
The DA40 is very airworthy. I have my doubts about many of the 70s era airplanes. Our local A&P stumbled onto some major wing spar corrosion in a Cessna 172 I was renting. I flew my wife on a cross country trip in the same 172 to check out a Cirrus. When we got close to Green Bay the controller told me he was not receiving my transponder. I tapped the unit and it started working. COM2 went out on the same trip. The interior was falling apart and the exterior looked like a typical rental. That was enough to convince my tight fisted accountant wife that we should buy our own newer airplane. I am no less of an aviator by choosing a nicer airplane to fly than some others.If you equate the trendiness of the interior to the airworthiness of the craft.. well if you wash out because of a ugly interior... thats good for GA, as the people who only fly trendy planes tend to be the ones I ready about lawn-darting in the NTSB reports
And those folks will never see the tuck and roll leather interior of my personal plane, if you dont understand what makes a plane, or for that matter an aviator, you have no business in my skies IMO.
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Gary F
Final Approach
The fastest DA40s are at least 10 kts faster than older models but that is due to several factors. I can get a little better than140 kts cruise out of my 2003 DA40 under the right conditions. I think the "speed kit" landing gear uses smaller 15x6.00 MLG tires with more aerodynamic fairings and older models use 6.00x6 tires. The speed kit also has a nose gear strut fairing and the older models have none. I'll try to post some photos of both when I get the time.
If you equate the trendiness of the interior to the airworthiness of the craft.. well if you wash out because of a ugly interior... thats good for GA, as the people who only fly trendy planes tend to be the ones I ready about lawn-darting in the NTSB reports
Is that wisdom extracted from the same place as your earlier remarks about how anything but a Pitts or Stinson is for students and weekend warriors ? You may be right though, my favorite plane, a '72 factory turbo-comanche did just fine in the hand of us lowly weekend-warriors. It took a professional to load it up with 6 adults and to run it off the end of the runway
. Fwiw, the cirrus tied down next to me is owned by a naval aviator and beechtalk is chock full with airline and military pilots. So you dont see a difference between a well maintained classic and a neglected rental mule ?
Ugly interior doesn't make an aircraft un-airworthy, just unpleasant.
Irish_Armada
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If you equate the trendiness of the interior to the airworthiness of the craft.. well if you wash out because of a ugly interior... thats good for GA, as the people who only fly trendy planes tend to be the ones I ready about lawn-darting in the NTSB reports
And those folks will never see the tuck and roll leather interior of my personal plane, if you dont understand what makes a plane, or for that matter an aviator, you have no business in my skies IMO.
Pretty sure a Diamond does not meet the definition of trendy yet, considering how few and far between they still are. And it ain't about how cool the interior looks either, sorry. The 1979 shaggin' wagon cessnas I fly at our club are a blast to fly and their interior would make even their mother blush -- the question is if I had the money to buy something newer in the same class, what would I go with, now that prices seem to be somewhat evening out ... Cessna/piper/cirrus/diamond.....:rolleyes
Gary F
Final Approach
DA40s are not that rare anymore. About a thousand are flying. Last year 72 DA40s were built, Piper produced 15 Warriors and 2 Archers, 103 Cessna 172s, and Cirrus made 48 SR20s. Hopefully, the numbers will increase if the economy ever improves.
Quality sells.
I believe some of those DA40 sales were overseas fleet sales.
One thing to keep in mind with Piper is that they dont actually try to sell their PA28 derivatives. Unless you committ to a batch, they won't start up production for a single order. I wish they farmed them out to Hindustan Aeronautics or some indonesian outfit to make them competitive on price.
Pretty soon, DA40s will be common enough that the knuckleheads finally get around to kill themselves in them.
Gary F
Final Approach
The diesel variant of the DA40 is produced in Austria for sale in Europe only. I think that the majority of DA40s manufactured in Canada stay in North America. Diamond will start producing DA40s in China for use in that part of the world. http://www.diamond-air.at/news_detail+M58ef2a77bc6.html
AggieMike88
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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
I've seen a few mentions of 1000-hr and 2000-hr inspections for the DA40's.
What items are these looking at? Does this repeat at future 1000-hr intervals?
What items are these looking at? Does this repeat at future 1000-hr intervals?
sdpilot
Pre-takeoff checklist
Download the AMM and look at chapter 4 for mandatory items. I would have uploaded it but it is 95MB in size.
http://www.diamond-air.at/da40-180_amm_bas+M52087573ab0.html
NineThreeKilo
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EXACTLY! thats the point I was trying to make.
Just keep in mind that the AGE has NOTHING to do with the CONDITION.
There was a flight school when I was in SoCal that had a few late model (2000+) 172s, these things were death traps. The owner found some APIA who did the bare minimum (if even that). The school bragged that they had the newest fleet and this being SoCal the folks ate that crap up....meanwhile there was another school (that I rented from once in a while) with two VERY nice carbed 172, the owner there had less overhead and believed in GOOD maintenance.
My other comment on the folks that arnt proficient (20ish hrs a month) being poor aviators, I read the monthly NTSB reports. The investigators have been including the hours logged in the past year from the victims medicals, almost 90% of the time when you click on a fatal one the guy wasnt putting on jack for hours before his death.
Correct, however construction does, and I don't see the Skycatcher or the thing Piper sold for awhile being constructed to the standards of the previous era planes.
How many Yugos you see on the roads? I see more old 60s and 70s GMs, Fords and Mopars on the road than 80s Yugos and other econoboxes, and that is the impression the 162 left me with, a flying Yugo.
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To some extent it does, the voice of my fat materials testing prof still rings in my ear: 'aluminum never forgets' (something with S/N plots and it never quite reaching 0, it all gets a bit foggy 20+ years later)
A cabin door that has been cycled 5000 times will sag, a door latch cycled 5000 times will rattle, control bushings start to wear etc. Unless an aircraft undergoes a complete 'airframe overhaul' (or D-check) ever so often it just wears out.
One of the nicest Pa28s I have flown was a 1200hr 235 that spent 21 years of its life on blocks in a hangar while the owner kept trying to get his medical back. That plane was like a time-capsule straight from 1977 with still supple red vinyl, a door and cowling that closed on the first try etc. The only thing it needed was a set of 720 channel radios. So yes, calendar age doesn't matter, total hours/cycles on the airframe do matter.
Gary F
Final Approach
The big thing every 1,000 hrs is an electrical bonding check which requires wing removal which is really not that big of a deal in a DA40. The 2,000 hour includes oil radiator proof test, replace engine compartment fuel and oil hoses. Diamond recommends a number of other things (AMM chapter 5 items) every 2,000 hrs like engine, alternator and electric fuel pump overhaul and structural inspection but they are not required for continued airworthiness
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