Flying the DIAMOND DA50 RG - Better than Cirrus?

hi and welcome I know many half gigs and private Pilots out there have that thing which I tend to call the if I win the lottery airplane the kind of dream airplane that you'd instantly order if you somehow had the money to afford it for many years the toys would have been fairly easy you'd of course buy a series SR22 or a 22 turbo why because there's never been an equivalent competition to it which is why the Cirrus Sr series for a number of years has been the best-selling GA airplane out there now I'm afraid finding an answer to this imaginary question has become a lot more difficult because of this Diamond's da50rg it has been in development for quite some time and received a certification in late 2022 with deliveries ramping up now the reason I'm here today at the headquarters of diamond aircraft in vino neustad in Austria is because I've been annoying diamonds marketing department for almost two years with a number of emails and phone calls and apparently they had enough and finally invited me over for a test flight in this so hopefully I'll be able to answer the big question is it better than the Cirrus SR22 let's find out let me first give you an overview around the outside the first time you see this aircraft on the ramp you'll immediately notice that this is not a small airplane it is in fact about 1.5 meter or four foot longer and its wingspan is almost 2 meters and or about six feet wider than a cirrus which means it will no longer fit in a standard 40 foot hanger which I know can be kind of a bummer for potential us customers the wing needs to be a bigger wider though because it needs to carry this large fuselage which the da50 got from its twin sister the da62 let's stick to the wing though for a moment while it also shares its basic construction with the ds62 the df50s wings have gotten its own airliner style double slotted flaps and these flaps are so effective they managed to lower this two-ton aircraft stall speed to an impressive 59 knots and yes you're right the da50r she has a maximum takeoff weight of 1999 kilograms or about 4 400 pounds and is thus significantly heavier than the series at roughly the same useful load depending a bit on the options one of the reasons the d850 is heavier is because of its Beating Heart that sits below this massive cowling there behind me the d850rt has a fatally controlled liquid cooled twin turbocharged V6 jet fuel burning engine called the Continental cd300 to be precise it is the latest addition to continental's jet fuel burning engines that puts out 300 horsepower actually apart from the retractable landing gear the engine might be the thing that really sets it apart from the competition from Duluth in Minnesota you might know diamond is famous for relying on jet fuel burning engines even though their history with those has been a difficult part in the beginning some might have been following the whole diesel story from the beginning Diamond was one of the first companies ever to put jet fuel burning engines with technology derived from the car industry into their planes for this purpose they partnered with a company called tilt in the beginning for various reasons still it went bankrupt a few years later which turned out to become a huge problem for Diamond which is why they took things into their own hands and started making their own austro engines that now power the da40 NG the da42-6 as well as the da602 by the way if you wanted to learn more about the diesel history in GA make sure to check out Paul better release Masterpiece of Aviation journalism and learn how Diamond managed to be successful with their austrians so with this plane Diamond went back to trusting a partner for the engine of their da50 here and there is good reason to believe that the cd300 will be successful as well jet fuel engines have definitely a better reputation these days reliability is no longer an issue the CD 300 itself has an increased TBR of 2000 hours and the gearbox has no fixed replacement intervals at all anymore will find out more about the advantages of the jet fuel engine later first though it's a time to finally take a look at the interior the occupy ter the da50 threw their own Gullwing entry door which is a thing you won't find in the competition you'll also notice the cabin is very spacious so it's actually 120 centimeters wide wide both in the front and the back compared to the 124 centimeters in the series front seats and less than that in the back this is why the d850 can comfortably see the 5 which can't really be said of the SR series not only the cabin is larger but also the baggage compartment is massive you will get access to it by folding down the rear seats it is divided into two areas there also is a compartment below the um floor there and your total baggage you can take along is 90 kilograms and you have plenty of volume to load all your stuff there by the way as I said the d850 has the same cabin as the da62 however there is no option for a shirt for a third seating Row in here but of course we're all more interested in this seat there anyway oh welcome to the cockpit of the d850 getting into this seat was very easy as you can fold the leg rest up to easily place your feet here on the floor while holding onto these two handles here up front there they are um those who flew diamonds before will immediately feel at home in here it's all pretty typical Diamond issue have your big two screens of the G1000 nxi there your lightning controls up here all the engine controls down here with the electrical master and stuff you get that big single power lever here in the middle and as well as your environmental controls which is a new to the da50 you also have the option to add air conditioning for the aircraft here nicely on the right are and the circuit is the circuit breaker panel nicely visible to the pilots and your fuel controls down here as an option in the df50 as well in the ds62 you have your keypad here which makes controlling and entering stuff in the G1000 nxi a lot easier so to sum it up there are a lot of similarities in here with the da40 and the da42 and the is almost identical to the one of the da62 while we are getting ready for the flight let me point out one thing that I find weird about diamonds which is that you can't adjust the seat in height in any of their planes Diamond's reasoning Behind these fixed seats is that they will hold in place in the event of a crash as Diamond has identified seed rails as a weak area and crashes they also put special crash elements underneath the seats to absorb the energy instead of passing it on to the occupants now I'm a little below the average size person at 1 meter 73 or 5 foot 8 which means the height is just about fine for me however if you were smaller than that you will want to make sure to order a cushion that matches this stunning interior when filling out the contract form for your plane the Petals on the other hand can be moved back and forth electrically to adjust to different sizes the seat back can be reclined as well now I think time to start the engine doing so on the df50 is almost as simple as starting the engine in a car you flip up the engine master switch which will power the FedEx and turn on the glow plugs in the cylinders you can see the ends here today on the G1000 once this goes off you just make sure the prop is clear and push the big silver start button down there unlike in most all the aircraft engines make sure to actually hold the starter until the engine runs smoothly then immediately make sure the oil pressure is good by the way this starting procedure is mostly the same on all jet fuel aircraft engines on the market uh this is [Music] not now it's about time to introduce you to siren he's head of flight test at Diamond aircraft and has been with diamond for a long time he has also done most of the certification flights in the da50rg and will be introducing us to the aircraft today [Music] it is actually free capturing the nose yes that's what I wanted to mention you have to use the toe brakes to you know to control the the front key or ground [Music] right it's actually it's easy you get the hang of it now that's one feature I forgot to mention uh when showing you the cockpit before that's something that I really like diamond to put the rudder trim actually on the back side of the of that big glorious power level there so what you do is as Palace of you might know every change in power on the single engine piston airplanes require a change of of the rudded input as well so Diamond thought of that and put the rudded rather trim button right there on that power level so it it really kind of reduces pilot work but I really like that kind of that kind of thing so we go on the bay there yes yes [Music] the run-up is kind of like and every diesel engine it's just basically pushing that person there hold it and what you're going to be seeing I just explained really quick is you first have the ECU A and B indication there and then the ecu's will go through their kind of routine now it's only a ecub fail you feel the RPMs Rising there a bit and going back now the same thing should be happening on ECUA now you see ECUA fail here same thing there again and just make sure that after the test there are no easy warnings anymore and that's kind of your run-up is there anything to add perfect so that's how easy running up a diesel engine is like or jet fuel burning engine here is just like with all the other Australians as well the checklist also requires you to do an available power check while you run up the engine to the maximum and just make sure it delivers full power departure Factory Tango this is zero degrees eight knots maximum one five from the two seven next we can take off at your own description [Music] so just uh if we look sweaty it's just because this demonstrator it has the air conditioning panel but as all the certification was made on this aircraft it actually has no air conditioning installed but of course if you were one of the lucky ones that being able to order one of these planes you can uh take the air conditioning there as an option it's part of the options list no but before we continue talking too much let's make sure lining up this aircraft properly here as well ready [Music] you're breaking a little bit yeah I know um so we are approaching rotating speed and rotate all right so positive rate of climb I hit the brakes and you know how the fusible Runway the gear is coming up all right [Music] all right climbing two you said that three and a half thousand feet there right yeah a lot of positive you won't reach it okay so then um [Music] it's the other you know I should ask you on the other side [Music] actually the biggest grass Airfield in Europe oh wow is it yeah good okay so we can bring it back to Max continues yes but that's 90 the max continuous here right yes yeah and we clear of obstacles the flaps are coming up okay so we can switch off the emergency fuel pump [Music] we usually keep the lights on here in that area because it's it's really really used for for training so now the acceleration takeoff was quite impressive the da50rg reached its rotation speed of about 60 knots in no time and got US Airborne quickly thanks to these effective flaps I was expecting I would need to use a lot of right router but as we had already set the rudder trim to accommodate the input needed I kind of over corrected and had the impression I might need some differential braking to the left in order not to leave the center line too far to the right something else I noticed is the relatively low noise level in the cabin even with the engine working at Full Steam this series is definitely considerably louder with its tsio 550. we left the area of being annoyed at southbound towards the Alps to check the performance and flying characteristics of the df50 before that time to sum up some First Impressions one relates to the new environmental control system and the cabin temperature now as you can see mounting the iPad Mini there with these fixed aircraft attached RAM mount bolts might not be too clever not only because it blocks The View onto the PFD here for you guys but also because it blocks the event behind it but even after I removed the iPad and the case a bit later it was still very hot in the cabin as I said this demonstrator has no air conditioning installed I consider it a must-have option after this flight though so yes what I can tell is that compared to the other da the diamond aircraft that I've blown before which is the a20 df14 da42 it kind of has a heavier feel to it at the corner of the country yeah I still definitely prefer the central stick to for example for the side stick you get in the series to me this is kind of the most intuitive way to to fly an aircraft yeah I know the serious guys will be writing comments now saying it's just because you're not used to this here as well what I can't tell you is that after flying about to 2500 or even more hours on the Airbus A320 family which has the side stick as well yeah and I still prefer the the yolk in the triple seven now yes it will be in in your way for 99 of the flight but for that one percent where you actually go get the hand fly the aircraft it is it is better and even like this uh better than the yolks so it's just it's just fun and intuitive to fly actually I'll of course admit all of this mostly comes down to personal preference it's not if you've ever been sitting in a general aviation aircraft most of them are either like sitting really close here it is pretty comfortable here the view is great actually with the window from the outside you can't really tell that it's it's going it's coming down so so low here on the side yeah but the view is it's really actually good yeah you can look down vertically more or less good next up comes a high performance Cruise check so time to see how the DF HD performs if you put the hammer down and let it go at maximum continuous power which equals 90 or roughly 270 horsepower here at 8 000 feet so with a 90 note the airspeed is actually increasing what do you expect to see with 90 uh cruise is that kind of out through AirSpeed 175 something like that now yes this is a kind of a a large aircraft as I explained on the ground so you will see faster Cruise numbers on on other planes but still I mean you'll you'll be more efficient than definitely than with any of the io 550s there and uh I mean we're all Pilots we'd like to fly is it really worth like investing like uh four or five gallons more just for these extra 10 knots of AirSpeed I guess well it's not too bad 175. that's that's an awesome awesome I think if if I actually oh if I actually feel that plane myself it it's definitely more economic to go like 70 or so and you'll be in a in a Range uh like 12 11 12 gallons and that's something you for for an aircraft they speak that's uh that's just outstanding that's really impressive so uh for the time being at 90 load you have about 15 Gallons which is still not bad still a lot less than than on the competition now it's time to back all of this up by some facts let's look at the relevant pages of the afms of both aircraft the df50rg on the left and this series SR22 turbo on the right the ladder will only go up to 85 power and crew so let's compare the numbers at the 75 power at 8 000 feet in either conditions for both of these planes you can see for yourself the zeros will be 40 knots faster in this example while burning 4 US gallons or about 15 liters per hour more in other words the diamond will be about eight percent slower but about 24 more fuel efficient at the same time and let's not forget you have a bigger plane and a more spacious and comfortable cabin to spend the time in yeah with that with that tattoo burning engine you really see is he figures you you won't be buying within your won't be honey with any of the Afghan and you don't have to leave and watch out for the temperatures all the time sorry yeah I can easily you can actually easily change your power settings whenever you like without taking care about the engine now with one question regarding the countless you really have I have control again thanks so much we have have kind of already Big Air inlets you still need those for additional just for the client in the hot weather conditions for the climb and otherwise so if you departed in Winter you can leave those closed for three years as well yeah it's just you have to monitor the temperatures right that's part of the standard procedure yeah it's just to make it easy so before take off your suit you're just opening the cowards but I think it's a big difference actually if it flies because you're up too fast yeah I think the ESP could be mentioned here so when you're banking now more than 45 degrees if the aileron force would be would decrease actually you can do that if you like now to make sure this video doesn't get too long after all we'll skip this part and fast forward to the clean stall if you were interested in more details like the protection the autopilot provides some more technical stuff regarding the G1000 nxi the autopilot fuel system and so on make sure to visit my site on patreon where you can support this Channel and access that this video with an additional 15 minutes of patreon exclusive content for those who want to dive deeper and learn more about the da50 find the link in the video description so I would say we are starting with a clean store in this direction idle so that we're running again telling me hey because your gear is not down you can't switch it off but usually okay now we're bleeding away the speeds tonight you want me to recover once we go to the install warning or just continue to talk about it whatever you prefer you can bring it back to the to the stop zero zero again the stick force is coming more and more so normally you would want to trim at this point but actually I'm just gonna hold it for now we continue all the way to the buffer between stall at about 75 75 knots there [Music] back up again uh it's really it has no tendency to go to any officer to actually tip over on any of the Wings we lost now about six seven hundred feet but that's because I actually held it in the stall for a while yeah that's really that's really uh okay I think uh let's go to Xbox star characteristics the Stalls in takeoff and Landing configuration were equally uneventful I've flown a few different GI airplanes by now and can confirm the da50 really has textbook store characteristics awesome okay we can now simulate an approach a fast approach yes let's do that so your running to a bigger airport and you don't want to stir up the fast moving Jets so you can keep this traffic keep the speed up the one 70 on the Glide just add power of going dog put three percent slide that's kind of a scenario where you go in a bigger airport on the islands and you want to don't want to hold up the traffic behind actually Airline is too much so it's that's the flight path back to there and the G1000 nxi which is nice to have that should be about three degree now a bit less than that maybe actually yeah we have a 90 load that might be a bit too much let's uh keep it in 80 there anyway you can actually be flying that's kind of a triple seven uh approach speed now so you you really won't be holding up holding up anyone there yeah I don't know so you would go below 161 then you can drop the gear pretty quickly so you see you're keeping the three degrees the speed is bleeding down so keep the three degrees and still the the speed fleets below the the takeoff speed which we're reaching with 431 yes let's take off people and we could now select learning flaps already exactly flaps for the landing so I'd really be yeah you see you could comfortably keep the speed up to at least let's say maybe three miles on Final or even less closer yes um and uh yeah that's that's a cool it's a cool thing especially the Landing operation speed 161 not so that's going to be approach to be there about 75 right uh it's actually it's actually a cool fight cool life yeah that's good all right ski up flips take off okay check gear back to those 75 before we start the approach let's look at some numbers there we did already look at the performance figures in cruise let's compare the takeoff distance the da50rg will achieve compared to their competition from overseas despite the heavier weight of the diamond it still offers a lower rotation speed and requires roughly 12 percent less Runway to get airborne compared to the Cirrus as both have the turbo this ratio remains mostly unchanged at high altitudes regarding useful load both planes really play in the same league the series will use more fueling Crews but afghas is a little less dense compared to jet fuel plus the useful load is a little higher in the series to start with so we're really not a big difference there it's important to remember though that if you were to opt for air conditioning and the TK is de-icing both aircraft's empty weight will be at least 50 kilograms or 110 pounds heavier and finally the kind of most important figure of them all the price I have to disappoint you because I can't really give a fair comparison there partly because unlike Cirrus Diamond won't publish their price lists partly because there are too many variables that have an influence on the math the biggest might be the Euro US Dollar exchange rate then there's the import tax cost of a fair of light on possible discounts selected options Etc what I can tell you though that according diamonds marketing team uh nicely equipped the a50rg will cost about a million euros so with the exchange rate at the time I'm editing this video this would mean that both planes cost roughly the same now you know why this stream airplane will stay a dream airplane for the vast majority of private Pilots including myself sad but true now sit back and enjoy the approach back into Vena neistat so the approach is a little bit weird here so the next point is that uh reporting Point fight there this is actually an industrial Bakery over there oh wow yeah so you're gonna steer for that point it disengates the other part that is actually this one here yep now for those watching in the United States and many European countries we have like a kind of prescribed tracks we need to follow when flying into smaller airfields that's mostly not mostly for a noise abatement purposes there and it is uh the same kind of story here in vino neuster as well that's uh why you're saying the approach is kind of weird yeah good so Landing lights on the fuel pump on and where's the fuel pump on there and Lima as well it's just straight ahead there straight ahead all right and then we're doing a turn onto the right base leg all right that's a little bit weird you can go down to 1500 now all right and we avoid that Village and then we're left in poor right uh exactly perfect oh we can't open the call steps for the uh the touch ago yeah you just have to configure as and you do the right base kind of like in a angle and that's a very short final actually we're usually following the railway line here for us to get rid of the water 200 degrees and afterwards it's gonna be a right circuit as well yes I'll make sure it's a very short one it's happy with the liquid peppers okay good so we can take the short one in the north yeah okay now usually the pro speed is you said 75 to 80 knots somewhere 80 85 yeah all right so Target speed will be 75. Edge or just before touchdown yeah okay and you cross the railway I should just follow it I'm usually following it you can cross it so we've cut the gear down I will just make the gear test once and make sure that the red is also working all right Landing so speed was below 190 knots there yep and now we are about 80 85 that's what you said yes oh yeah as always in life it was in this very moment that my main GoPro Hero 10 decided it had no more battery after just a little more than an hour of recording time so no more intercom audio for the rest of the flight with its final speed of roughly 75 knots the d850s approach speed is roughly 5 maybe 10 and not slower than in the series which is a nice and shorter runways here in Europe let's see how my first learning works out foreign I was actually pretty happy with that first landing for a retractable landing gear the undercarriage soaks up the Entergy nicely which of course helps in making a good impression with your passengers the attitude shot before touchdown there was about two to three degrees and I still had quite some excess energy there so I'd say the da50 has no tendency whatsoever to land flat or on its nose wheel if you're not bleeding away all the energy some say this issue requires more attention in the series spoiler alert I'm proud to report the second Landing went even better make sure to watch the Pitch during touchdown this should confirm what we saw before [Music] [Music] with these two Landings My df50 Demo experience ended it was an awesome experience thanks again to siren for showing me this beautiful plane I'm sorry I can't show him again here because he had another GoPro camera with its service in that moment so what are the takeaways from this flight so the airplane is back safely in hunger we didn't actually destroy it which is good and it's time for a conclusion and to answer the big question for myself would I buy this if I had the money to afford this is can this kind of my new dream airplane I can tell you for sure for me it is I like this better than the series I'd rather have this than an SR22T why partly because of the positive positive Impressions from this awesome demo flight um and all the positives that we learned about before partly because it kind of fits better into the European GA infrastructure it can be operated out of a shorter shorter runways it can take jet fuel which you'll get almost everywhere which is not true for Africa's here in Europe for customers in North America the decision might be a bit more difficult because of the walking the market leader has its selling points as well of course caps for example to name just one but even then I think thanks to the engine the da50 seems to be the more more future-proof airplane I'd say it is more efficient it runs not only on jet fuel but can also be operated on a synthetic jet fuel substitutes which at least a midterm appear to be the only realistic way to run a plane of this size relying without relying on fossil fuels I don't expect to see any synthetic afghan's alternative at least for now I honestly am very curious to read your opinion guys down in the video and down in the comment section let me know if you if you like the diamonds if you um like it this masterpiece here especially with the F50 and let me know about your dream airplane a big thanks to Diamond as well for allowing me to fly the demonstrator here in a beautiful Austria if you enjoyed watching this film make sure to hit the like button and subscribe to this channel I'd love to see this small Channel grow a bit it is a ton of work that goes into it and creating making a video like this thanks for watching all the way to the end and as always um many happy learnings out there [Music]

Channel: A SWISS PILOT

Views: 314,567

Keywords: DA50, Diamond, Cirrus SR22, Cirrus SR22T, Cirrus Aircraft, Plane

Id: cTwrdyI4uCk

Length: 37min 0sec (2220 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022