US buyers are deeply skeptical of wooden planes,
That’s true for many buyers, but in the US Robin wouldn’t be selling to Cessna or Piper buyers, or into fleets. There might be some common ground with Diamond. The volume would be small as a result but might potentially be significant for Robin. The reason it wouldn’t actually happen is that it would require very reliable and attentive US parts service and support, for a number of years, plus good pricing. Enough of that to be reported in the press and to build a cult following. Bellanca did it that way, once upon a time.
The advantage of the Robin over for example abortive attempts to market Zlins in the US is that the Robin’s numbers pencil out pretty well and the parallel valve Lycoming engines are what people want to operate.
A_and_C wrote:
but of course selling in America would require the level of customer service that the French seem incapable of understanding
It would also require the aircraft not be built from wood. US buyers are deeply skeptical of wooden planes, especially when there’s a ready supply of all metal and composite planes available.
A_and_C wrote:
The aircraft is already a great performer and capable of out running and out ranging the DA40 ( with the same engine )
I love the Robin and a close friend owns the 180 HP version in very good condition: fully refurbished with a newly OH engine and prop.
I no longer own DA40s but have 1’000 hours in the type (DA40-180, not diesel), loved every second of that too.
Comparing notes, the Robin is slower by at least 10 knots. Hardly surprising considering the huge difference in wing airfoil and construction.
Both the DR400 and the DA40 are IMO wonderful planes. Both missed their chance at market dominance for peripheral reasons…
Having owned a DR400 for longer than I care to remember I Have lost count of the number of times the company has gone bust and come back , My expectation is a return to business as usual shortly and the return to headline grabbing but fruitless tinkering with the DR400.
If Robin or whatever they are called this week want to move from cottage industry to serious aircraft builder they need to re-engineer the DR400 with all American hardware and get the thing certified in the USA with the Lycoming.
The aircraft is already a great performer and capable of out running and out ranging the DA40 ( with the same engine ) but of course selling in America would require the level of customer service that the French seem incapable of understanding, so off they go with another interesting technical innovation that is more than likely a dead end.
It’s all rather sad because the DR400 outperforms just about every other aircraft in its class and I am sure that it would do well enough in the USA to double the annual sales of the aircraft.
Ha ha indeed boring in a sense that they are everywhere in France!
…but not boring to fly by any means. Delemontez definitely hit a home run with his design. Remember his original aim was to make it accessible to homebuilders, with ease of construction and relatively low cost being two items of the requirement specification list. Amazing that 60+ years later so many D112, Mousquetaires and other DR1050 are still flying. Some have well over 10,000 hours.
Of course Robins are boring if you compare them to an Extra 300 or some hotshot fighter jet. Everything is relative as Mr Einstein once said! :D
Note: in full disclosure, I have to say that I am not entirely impartial :D :D
I meant average french club pilots, fed with Robins since birth 
“For us, Robins are the most boring planes around.”
Who are “us”? I’ve had one flight ( not P1) in a nosewheel Robin (design and manufacture) and I liked it.
I’ve 1,700+ hours in a Robin design, DR1050, and it was much less boring than any C or Pa, and even my present Bolkow Junior.
The thing is that the situation in Norway is much more relevant to the rest of Europe than the situation in “the world’s center of the GA market”
I disagree: The GA market and products supplied to that market are not in general divided by country or region of the world. GA products cater to what will sell in the most volume worldwide, to the most buyers wherever that are. That market is mainly, by financial volume, in the US. I think one should bear that in mind when making sweeping, hyperbolic, coercive (“I think we can safely say”) statements about the GA market and its economics from a country which has atypical economics and that barely registers in GA sales – something which is also true to a lesser extent to Europe as a whole.
Silvaire wrote:
Well, I happen to live at the world’s center of the GA market, and I’m talking about the world’s GA market.
The thing is that the situation in Norway is much more relevant to the rest of Europe than the situation in “the world’s center of the GA market”. You can harp on all you want about how the situation in Europe is screwed up e.g. with respect to fuel prices. Whether you are right or not does not matter in the least because we have to deal with what we have, not with what you have in the US.
… yet 
