Diamond DA50 – Fast, Safe and Expensive! Review, History & Specs!

in our videos we often review both engineering Novelties and the fascinating history of a particular plane we have already talked about the fastest lightest most expensive and even the most unique but we forgot one crucial Criterion in the aviation World safety there is one particular plane that has a bit of all the upper mentioned properties but excels in Ultimate safety it All Began in 1980 when Austrian aircraft designer wolf Hoffman founded a new company called Hoffman fluto bow here's a little German lesson for you fluko ba basically means aircraft manufacturing so in English it would sound something like Hoffman's aircraft manufacturing company from the very start their goal was clear and Loud conquer European general aviation with light safe and modern aircraft well easier said than done but pretty soon Hoffman showed their first aircraft h36 daona and you know what this plane was just amazing yeah first try first win technically it was a motorized glider but man the all composite fuselage low fuel consumption hence the great range and excellent flying characteristics it all made the daona the biggest selling motor glider in Europe of that time well this much success is always tricky for for a small company much like Tech startups these days small Hoffman fluky B was bombarded with offers from investors in bigger conglomerates and that's where the story becomes even more [Music] interesting interestingly we hadn't mentioned the name Diamond aircraft yet well because there wasn't such a company until 1996 but how well the h36 daona made such a splash that Hoffman's fluty B focused solely on fulfilling new orders and even separated the manufacturing of this particular plane and renamed the branch to daona aircraft but in 1992 Hoffman's fluto bow was acquired by Christian D who set an even more challenging goal conquer not only Europe but America too but we have a a lot of uh D 42s now delivered already to United States we are producing in the Moment One airplane per working day and uh unfortunately we are sold out for the next 18 months this resulted in a new facility in Canada which in 1996 was finally renamed from daona to Diamond aircraft for the next 20 years Diamond would conquer the hearts of thousands of Pilots first with its da20 Katana an offspring of the h36 with more power and less Glide then the amazing da40 and the bigger twin da4 2 and then we have the hero of today's video the plane that sets a benchmark even higher than any other Diamond plane and perhaps not only Diamond if the da20 and da62 had a son it would be the da50 well pilots who are familiar with the diamond Fleet might argue what about the da40 well what's special about the da50 its performance and its size it's not just just a da40 with retractable gear this plane was made to impress and it does but we will talk about it later first let's get to know this bird well if we would like a first impression we would need to travel back in time to 2006 and get employed by Diamond as the da50 was first shown at Diamond's Christmas party yeah just casually have a Merry Christmas oh and by the way here's our new plane it was all composite with a low-r and tail fuselage a classic of diamond but it was bigger than any other single engine plane made by them in April 2007 the da50 was first shown to the public at an arrow show in Germany and later shown in America and while Diamond again received lots of inquiries the da50 was still in the Prototype phase and then 2009 the global economic crisis of 2009 didn't spare General a ation and Diamond switched its focus to the diamond djet which could potentially be purchased by businesses as time pass Diamond got back to the da50 and adjusted it to the latest technology while also exploring different variants such as pressurized and non-pressurized models four and seven seat options and even one equipped with Tundra tires well finally in 2020 the most advanced single engine Diamond plane got its certification and entered production let's take a closer look at the final specs when you compare the da50 and da62 side by side you will be amazed that they are almost identical in size yep the twin and single engine models are both around 30 ft long and 9 ft high but of course the da50 has slightly smaller Wings 44 ft thanks to the composite fuselage this bird is quite light which allowed for lots of nice to have Fe Fe added alongside a pretty big Continental cd300 engine an interesting fact is that this family of Continental engines started with a modification of the Mercedes-Benz om 6680 which could be found on Benz a class hatchbacks we have already seen previous variants of the CD family on diamond twins but the cd300 is the peak of Aviation diesel engines its six-cylinders produce 300 horsepower at 2300 RPM and burn just around 9 Gall per hour of crws speaking about Cruise realistically you'll get around 160 knots while its maximum will be 180 and knowing that the da50 stores 50 gallons of fuel the range will be around 700 nautical miles is it enough let me know where you would fly this bird of course Diamond doesn't skimp on Modern technological advancements so the G1000 nxi is included in the base configuration but you can optionally equip it with a TKS deicing system air conditioning oxygen masks and dozens of other features this all sounds great but remember we started this video claiming that this plane is the safest one out there well now let's talk about that as with all the bigger Brothers of the da50 safety was put in the first place for this plane too the fuselage itself is made stiff as a rock but only where it's needed the this allows for some sort of a roll cage structure where all the non-crucial parts of it are made to break in case of a rough Landing thus absorbing the impact but the roll cage will remain intact protecting the pilots and passengers another crucial aspect is fire protection by the way did you know that there are more fatal accidents caused by fire after landing than by the impact itself well I think it's worth mentioning that even if this bird might not have the most impressive useful load of 1,200 lb just remember that it's partially because of the tough flexible stainless steel braided fuel lines which are indeed heavier than aluminum ones but are less likely to break and leak in case of impact this combined with other Innovations introduced while thoroughly testing the fuselage seats tanks landing gear and virtually any other crucial component of the plane made the diamond hold the record of the fewest fatal accidents in general aviation oh and of course all diamonds come with the bistic recovery system and the da50 is no exception in case of emergency the large choot will land you safely and [Music] smoothly here is where it gets tricky remember we compared the size with the da62 the price for the da62 is $1.4 million but the da50 costs $125 million so if you have a twin engine license maybe it's better to throw in an additional $150,000 and get more range and speed I still haven't understood why they would practically cost the same especially if you compare a new da50 to a 2 or 3-year-old da62 let me know your thoughts in the comments section below thank you for joining us in this deep dive into the diamond da50 the safest single engine airplane in the sky if you enjoyed this video please don't forget to give a like And subscribe to our channel for more fascinating stories from above the clouds fly safe and until next time

Channel: Big Metal Birds

Views: 5,667

Keywords: aviation, avgeek, general aviation

Id: eJJcaEec8dc

Length: 9min 5sec (545 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2024