Also, what’s the Ceiling of that beauty? The website doesn’t seem to refer to it, at least in quick google / performance sheet. Something like 16,400 ft (DA40NG)?
They’re very clever, the liquid forms into a sort of a gel which is sealed in by a ‘ziplock’!
In years past I knew a woman in southern Europe who used a gel pack like that, but most men just pee into a bottle. Women tend to have huge bladders (7 hours easily possible) but otherwise they use these
However I don’t think anybody should even think of limiting their radius in this way because you never know when you need to go. Pick a cold day, especially at night, especially after having had a coffee or two, a heater not working properly, and you don’t want to be flying an IAP in real hazardous wx while desperate to pee. There is nothing more totally stupid than having to land to do a Number 1 (Number 2, after dodgy oysters, is a different proposition). Also, everybody you are likely to fly with, male or female, knows what a willy looks like and they know it’s nothing special 
Regards range, this is important. Yesterday I did a 900nm flight back home from Brac in the TB20, in 6hrs 50 mins airborne in 5-15kt headwind. In any sort of non-CAVOK wx this represents a real value in time, stress, and safety. The moment you start splitting up flights, everything gets buggered. You need to file multiple flight plans (with hard to estimate EOBTs), you get refuelling risks (the fueller had a bit too much wine for lunch; see the other thread), you probably cannot get wx data for the subsequent legs. Very often you can descend but cannot climb back up through the same wx because even little ice prevents a climb, etc…
In reality one rarely flies on this “7hr” scale but shorter – yet very high value – trips become trivial e.g. Shoreham to Biarritz on 1/2 tank. That means if the fueller at Biarritz got pissed / got stuck refilling the Ryanair / went AWOL / whatever, you can still fly not quite back home but to countless other airfields which have avgas.
I have never flown a Robin and can’t contribute on that, but I am making the point that good range is worth a lot more than it might appear. Anyway, a diesel Robin should have a huge range. This trip (ahem, not the best example of aviation good practice but the pilot had a, ahem, “different” attitude to risk" ) was done in a diesel PA28, G-EGTR. That said, it appears that very few Robins are seen away from their base. I recall seeing one at Corfu in 2014 and that’s about it.
Mine was shared and not maintained to the same standards as Peter’s so I did not have a very good despatch rate
That plane had been neglected for decades and the present operator is paying the price for that. This is seen repeated everywhere. Downtime also has a very corrosive effect on going anywhere. I had a lot of this in my first year (due apparently to a gallic shrug approach to installing secondhand avionics – in a brand new 200k plane – which rapidly failed) and didn’t go anywhere at all.
The POH says that power setting makes much more difference than altitude to range – the max range at 16000ft is 952 NM but even at 2000ft its still 936NM but at a stately 108kts- the sweet spot seems to be about 8000 ft, about 72% power for about 750 miles at around 130kts, after that additional altitude makes little difference to speed or range
That is definitely not true for avgas engined planes. They still do the best MPG around 8k-12k (well the ones with a 20k ceiling) but that will be some 30% more than at 2000ft. I wonder what the reason is?
Peter wrote:
Women tend to have huge bladders (7 hours easily possible)
We mustn’t know the same ones!
Peter wrote:
I have never flown a Robin and can’t contribute on that, but I am making the point that good range is worth a lot more than it might appear
Agreed. That’s one my my issues with the DA40. Lyon is too short to be comfortable (no aux tanks). I have done a couple 3h45 flights but that’s about the max I’ll go (and on one of them I was looking very closely at winds / point of no return as flew Porto LPVL → La Rochelle (LFBH) straight line, and that’s a long portion over water! Don’t think I’d do it nowadays.
Peter wrote:
This trip (ahem, not the best example of aviation good practice but the pilot had a, ahem, “different” attitude to risk" ) was done in a diesel PA28, G-EGTR.
Noe wrote:
Also, what’s the Ceiling of that beauty? The website doesn’t seem to refer to it, at least in quick google / performance sheet. Something like 16,400 ft (DA40NG)?
It’s 16500ft, just like the Diamond. I know from experience that the DA40 goes much higher. I’ve done FL200 once.
Is that a real story!?
Yes.
Well, this is only ever so peripherally on the Robin topic, but the Robin pilot we met at Corfu flew there from France with a Michelin road atlas which he proudly showed us 
But there is no need, in a modern aircraft, a fuel totaliser, etc, to cut anything that close. So I don’t think many fly this way. I think a lot of people do VFR in IMC, and I certainly did that pre-IR, along with everybody else I ever knew except one guy who was adamant he never entered IMC while VFR (I don’t believe him).
Thinking about sharing a Robin DR40, another advantage springs to mind – compared to other types move flown there’s almost nothing a careless group member can do to damage the engine – no shock cooling, nor over rich/over lean, nor wrong prop pitch nor overheating since it can run at 100% and has no cowl flaps or similar.
- the only things I can think of would be to overspeed the prop by diving on full power, or to fail to warm up/cool down the turbocharger for two minutes on the ground – it’s quite hard to to fail to warm it up, because taking off less than two minutes from startup requires some very fancy footwork, but at small airfields you could easily be parked less than two minutes from landing so sitting there at idle for a few seconds is important.
NealCS wrote:
but at small airfields you could easily be parked less than two minutes from landing so sitting there at idle for a few seconds is important.
Agree on all counts (DA40NG is the “same”)
I fill the tech log before switching off the engine, this way you easily get that minute or two.
