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Views on DA40

Too many nice airfields here that have slightly marginal runways (~500 meters of asphalt or ~600 meters of grass), especially in the British Isles, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

I also fly a Super Dimona which does short fields very well :-)
I’ve been to Aero EKAE (789m grass) with a DA40 TDI. It is fine, but that’s about the minimum I would do for a grass runway.
With the DA40 I fly mostly to paved airfields that have an instrument approach. Runway length is never an issue. But it depends on the kind of flying you do…

No aircraft can ever have too much power; but this one (especially with the heavy G1000 avionics) definitely has a bit too little.

Once airborne it’s not a problem anymore ;-) I know I’m slower than for example a SR22 but I do have a lot of fun for a very competitive hourly rate ( < 100 EUR/h incl. fuel)

Last Edited by lenthamen at 04 Mar 16:15

I have a DA40-180; which I guess is between the DA40-diesel and SR22 on power and fuel.
I am pretty comfortable on 600m of grass.
Fuel usage is 8.3 GPH @ 142KTAS @ 8,000ft, which I think is not bad for AVGAS.

EGGD Bristol, United Kingdom

That’s a nice low fuel consumption too! My best setting, depending on conditions, is 12,8 GPH @ 170 KTAS @ FL110 to 120 in the Cirrus, but of course maintenance is more expensive too.

Where’s the photo of the plane? :-)

Here some pictures:

The previous (?) owners kept a blog about their trips, a lot of them IFR, you can view it here.

EHTE, Netherlands

Flew one for 2.5hrs today with the GFC700 AP – ‘wow!’

I like this AP a lot!

A quick note on the DA40 G1000 with the Centurion 2.0 engine:

We had a new Centurion 2.0 (135hp) engine installed in our aircraft this spring, but performance turned out really bad.
With really bad I mean an initial rate of climb of about 300fpm at MTOW.
Things start to get better when you gain some altitude, but needless to say that this could lead to potential dangerous situations.

The maintenance company had a look at it, but couldn’t find any issues.
The Diamond factory in Austria confirmed our findings, and the message basically was: The DA40 G1000 with the 2.0 (135hp) engine is a bad match. You need a stronger engine.

Within our group we also have the conventional (steam gauge) DA40’s, and they perform noticeably better with the same engine. The G1000 version is heavier and that could be the reason why performance is lacking.

We now ordered the 2.0S (155hp) engine. That will hopefully give better performance.
The 2.0S is 10.622€ more expensive in compare to the standard 2.0 Centurion. Also, the TBR is 1200hrs instead of 1500…

Did you get a refund on the 2.0? Why did performance turn out bad after the 2.0 install this spring — what was installed before?

Last Edited by achimha at 21 Aug 20:33

Did you get a refund on the 2.0?

No. It will be moved to a conventional DA40 within our group which need a new engine…

Sorry, but 20 or 30 kgs more weight in avionics can’t make so much of a difference in overall performance.

In other words: the one with steam gauges will be a dog as well…

And I hope that the additional 20 HPs from the 2.0s will make the difference for you.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 21 Aug 21:11
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany
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