If the golden age of the plastic airplane hasnt arrived, its about to. Cirrus is scooping up orders for its SR20, the Lancair Columbia may finally be rolling off the line in numbers and here comes Diamond with the long-awaited DA40-180 Star, a four-place follow-up to the Katana trainer.
If nothing else, the world doesnt lack for choice in four-place, fixed-gear aircraft, leading us to wonder if there are enough buyers to support all the manufacturers who hope to ply this increasingly crowded field.
For Diamond, the DA40 may be a must-do project and its coming late to the party. Diamond has been peddling the two-place Katana to the training market for more than five years, with moderate success.
Nonetheless, the company has found a two-place trainer selling in the $115,000 to $125,000 range to have limited appeal; very few Katanas have been sold to owners for sport or fun flying. The fact that Diamond never certified the Katana for IFR didnt broaden its appeal. All of which leads naturally-and necessarily-to the DA40 four-place, a more versatile design that can do triple duty as a trainer, line rental aircraft or as personal transportation. (If that sounds like a Cessna 172, thats exactly what Diamond has in mind.)
Katana 2+2
Parked on the ramp, the DA40 Stars looks like an inflated Katana and might as we’ll admit it: For practical purposes, thats what it is. The Star is a clean-sheet design, to be sure, but it borrows heavily from the two-place Katana, conceptually and aerodynamically. Like the Katana, the Star is entirely composite, using pre-preg construction but more carbon fiber than the Katana, primarily for weight and strength considerations.
The Star is noticeably bigger than the Katana but not what youd consider a big airplane, at least by four-place standards. The exception to this is the wingspan, which, at 39.4 feet, shows the Stars not-so-distant antecedence as a motorglider.
Before it made certified powered aircraft, Diamond-then HOAC and before that, Hoffman-made motorgliders at its Austrian headquarters in Weiner Neustadt. Motorgliders still account for a substantial share of Diamonds business.
Like a glider, the Star has high-aspect ratio wings but instead of spoilers, it has two-thirds span electrically operated slotted flaps, with conventional ailerons outboard. Pitch control is via elevator mounted on a high T-tail. (The T-tail is nearly 7 feet off the ramp so any inspection other than routine pre-flight will require a ladder. The DA40 is 25 feet long. As does the Katana, the Star has stick operated push-pull tubes routed through roller bearings for aileron and elevator control, while the rudder is cable operated. For trim, Diamond installed a standard wheel in the center console with a cable-controlled anti-servo tab.
The prototype we flew didnt have electric trim although final versions may have, possibly with a coolie hat switch on the stick. The Katana has only a rocker-switch for electric trim control and given the choice, we would prefer manual trim via the wheel.
One of the odder things about the Star is the cockpit canopy and door design. It has a forward hinged bubble canopy-the Katana is a spring-loaded rear opening design-and a leftside hatch for the rear seat passengers, both of whom enter and exit from over the wing on the left side.
Stretch and Bend
Frankly, this makes the Star one of the more awkward airplanes to enter and exit, in our view. There are two steps mounted forward of the wing, thus entering requires clambering up over the leading edge onto the wing walk and stepping inside, before plopping down in the seat.
The angles and heights are such that there’s no easy way to avoid planting your Nikes right on that new leather seat, thence to the floor, whose area is quite small. Getting out is a chore, too, since it requires hoisting yourself forward and up. Old guys with bad backs will squawk. The Katana has a pair of hand grips in the glareshield to help with exit and the Star will get these as well. In the meantime, grabbing a handful of the canopys hinge hardware works just as well, but its still an unnatural movement. Diamond is considering installing a step rear of the wing, but that wont make getting into the cockpit from the wing any more graceful.
Entering the rear seats through the side hatch is easier, since the hatch is quite large and the angles and shape work in the passengers favor. That said, scurrying into this airplane on a rainy day may not be a pleasant experience.
The front canopy especially exposes the interior to the elements so there’s no time to dawdle; you need to get in and button down the top as soon as possible and even then, we suspect things will be moist for awhile.
Were not sure how potential buyers will react to this canopy design. Frankly, were unable to judge it without flying the airplane more than we have. It may prove to be more a convenience than an annoyance in the long term.
The canopy hardware and latching mechanisms are sound and easy to manipulate and once inside and latched down, the airplane is quiet and secure. Visibility inside the cockpit is nothing less than astonishing.
The Katanas cockpit view is quite good but the Star surpasses even that standard, since its larger and has correspondingly more cockpit glass to look through. The view up is limited only by a frosted sunshield directly over the pilots heads. The lower edges of the canopy are about at elbow level, giving the sensation of sitting in a fishbowl.
Next question: Will the fish be frying in that bowl on a steamy Florida day? We cant say, since we flew the airplane on a blustery Ontario day when the direct March sunshine was welcome. The Katanas rear-hinged canopy has no ground ventilation position but pilots learn to prop it ajar manually to allow prop blast to make the cabin tolerable.
The Star will have a ground vent position for the canopy and it has excellent interior vents, a couple on the panel and overhead eyeball vents. There’s also a generous storm window and we suspect if this canopy design proves to be a solar oven, a scoop on that opening will help.
Cockpit Comfort
The prototype we flew was equipped with leather covered automotive type seats. By that, we mean the contours offer some lumbar support and have back/neck rests.
The seats don’t adjust, either fore and aft, nor do they recline. Short-stuff pilots can move the rudder pedal aft, using a small T-handle and cable lock on the pedal/brake assembly, a design we thought worked better than other such attempts weve seen. One thing we didnt like was that the rudder cables are exposed along the cockpit sidewalls. In the Katana Eclipse, these were buried behind side pockets and in an airplane this expensive, we don’t want such structural elements exposed.
The brakes are the standard toe mounts and they do the ground steering, since the airplane lacks a steerable nosewheel. Ground handling is very crisp and with one brake locked, the Star will turn on a dime.
Even with limited adjustment, we found the seats to be exceptionally comfortable and well-positioned, although they could so with foldable arm rest between the two seats for long cruises. We tried the rear seats briefly and our impression is that they have generous shoulder room but only adequate leg room. Even at that, toe room has been carved out from beneath the front seats with a couple of strategically placed slots.
The seats have a three-point restraint system-lap and shoulder harness-and are mounted on energy absorbing crushable foam and carbon structures designed to improve crash survivability. Field experience has shown the Katana is exceptionally crashworthy and our guess is that this will apply to the Star as well, despite its higher speed.
As far as we know, the Katana has been involved in only one fatal accident-a VFR-into-IMC encounter-and several in which the airplane was destroyed but the occupants walked, literally. Unlike the Lancair and Cirrus, the Star doesnt have a belly placard to tell rescuers how to extricate trapped occupants should the aircraft come to rest inverted. Nor does it have a secondary means of opening the canopy, as does the Lancair, which has pilot-removable door pins. Emergency egress will be through the rear passenger hatch, which also opens upward. Although the latest round of composite aircraft are undeniably more crashworthy, we think the trend toward canopies and gull-wing doors is less safe than conventional overwing designs, such as those used by Mooney and Piper, whose doors have minimal top fuselage exposure and thus are less likely to be unopenable if the aircraft flips.
But will this matter much in the real world of aircraft accidents? We simply don’t know. If all such designs make it through the next five years with no apparent crash safety shortfalls, our concerns may prove unfounded.
Panel Choices
As currently envisioned, the Star will come equipped with Bendix/King (nee AlliedSignal, nee Honeywell) Silver Crown Plus avionics, including a KLN 89B or 94 IFR GPS, should the thing ever make it to market. Naturally, Diamond would be insane not to offer Garmin radios as an option, since the market has a clear preference for the GNS 430 color mapcomm.
Diamonds Jeff Owen told us he expects most Stars to be shipped with more than a minimal IFR panel, and that means HSI, storm avoidance gear and an autopilot, a KAP 140 with altitude hold. Whether IFR-equipped or not, all of the Stars built will have the embedded mesh and wiring conduits necessary for IFR certification.
Compared to most four-place airplanes, the Star panel area is smallish; smaller even than older Mooneys. There’s room enough for the required avionics but not too many extras, in our view. Yes, you can fit a large-panel MFD into this cockpit, but it will take careful planning. (The panel is higher on the left side than the right, since the right is arced downward to improve visibility over the glareshield.)
In the prototype we flew, the engine instruments were the same Moritz gauges Mooney is using in its new aircraft, although production versions will have the Vision Microsystems multi-function engine gauge display, an LCD-based system. Our preference is the Moritz; the Vision systems look fine in homebuilts, but not in a $180, 000 certified airplane.
The electrics are controlled with a row of well-labeled rocker switches along the bottom panel, with the circuit breakers mounted far right, as per older Mooneys. And there are a ton of CBs, fully six rows of four to eight each. A set of critical system annunciators are positioned in the pilots scan just left of the radio stack.
Interestingly, there are nine round cutouts in the pilots main scan area, meaning there may be more room for indicators than for the boxes to drive them. For service access, the glareshield pops up, opening up the entire behind-the-panel area. Lighting is both internal and external, using an electroluminescent strip bonded to the underside of the canopy.
Ergonomically, we give the cockpit an A minus, our only serious misgiving being how tolerable it will be in hot weather. The stick, console-mounted throttle, prop, mixture and trim all come easily to hand and the backseat is accessible from forward for retrieving odds and ends.
Engine, Prop
As currently conceived, the Star has a Lycoming IO-360 engine, the same 180 HP parallel-valve variant used in the Cessna 172 and 172SP.