Peter wrote:
Presumably these military trainer projects are depending on getting business from some air force, otherwise they get abandoned, like the Grob 140.
Given Chinese ownership of Diamond it seems to me that the range of customers would be limited… although its true that the traditional SF260 business has included a number of countries that many wouldn’t know have an air force, and who probably aren’t so fussy in that regard.
One article on the DA50 is here
Dries claimed that fuel consumption of this engine is linear to power
Hmmm… some Nobel Prize grade physics has been employed there… The sort of curve which any internal combustion engine will do is a bit like this and you can see the fuel flow and power do not converge at 0,0. However, over a narrow range, stochiometric, the HP will be fairly linear with the fuel flow.
And DA62 prolly keeps selling: Diamondaviators had information that there would be no FIKI in DA50, that was discussed at Friedrichshafen. Of course it’s quite long way to 2018 and actually getting the plane available for sale things might change. But I presume the price would be closer to 1M eur (say 7-800k or thereabouts?) and no fiki sounds like a bad traveller…
huv wrote:
The DA-62 is apparently selling well.
It appears that they’re selling one every few days (at least that’s the rate they’re building them and there’s a big order backlog). They are now at about serial number 70.
The traditional SEP / MEP manufacturers (Piper, Cessna, Beechcraft, Mooney, etc.) have give us very little reason to buy new aircraft for the last few decades. I can’t imagine anyone ever buying a new PA28 or C182 etc. You can almost certainly buy and upgrade a used model for a fraction of the price (and likely end up with a better aircraft). Take the PA28 my dad and I fly. It out performs / out specs a new factory model (speed mods, three bladed prop, better avionics…) and cost a fraction of the price, we would never trade it in for a new one… It’s no wonder that sales of these aircraft have been in sharp decline.
What Diamond is doing is created aircraft that are genuinely innovative and clearly differentiated from what’s out there. They will sell extremely well compared to the legacy manufacturers making incremental improvements to ancient airframes and engines. Just look at how well Cirrus did with a modern airframe (even if they still went for legacy engines!).
This is of course wonderful news for everyone. In a few years these aircraft will be available on the used market and will start replacing the ageing GA fleet. The future looks good 
blueline wrote:
Hasn’t the D-Jet been cancelled once and for all?
Who knows? This is from November 2015: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/nbaa-diamond-says-d-jet-not-dead-419272/
They don’t have their little jet ready, yet they divert resources to this turboprop thing.
Hasn’t the D-Jet been cancelled once and for all?
The UK RAF are buying the Grob G120TP as the replacement for the current G115 Tutor.
