DIAMOND DA50 RG COUNTERPOINT
After reading Gary Bond’s DA50 RG flight trial in the September 2023 Aviation Consumer, I don’t get it. It has some really neat features and the latest ultra-modern tech, but for $1.15 million it doesn’t make cents for me. It’s relatively slow, heavy (at 4400 pounds) and it has limited range with only 49 gallons of usable fuel. It has a 300-HP diesel engine and can make 272 HP max continuous power and it burns Jet-A fuel, but the DA50 is certainly no jet.
The literature says it can cruise at 172 knots at 14,000 feet at 90 percent power, but the evaluation aircraft didn’t fly in that regime. If it did, you’d be out of fuel in three hours at that setting. At 75 percent power you get 160 knots on 12.4 GPH, and in four hours the tanks would run dry.
Comparing it to my 1975 V35B (3000-pound gross weight), at 11,500 feet I cruise at around 148 knots indicated on 12.5 GPH. The true airspeed is about 175 knots and according to the engine monitor, I’m making 59 percent power. And if my Bonanza had an IO-550 mod, you can add nearly 8 knots to its cruise speed. And turbonormalizing will add nearly 25 knots in the mid-teens. The Diamond is modern, but carbon fiber is heavy. Remember the Beech Starship?
I think there are so many good late-model airplanes out there for $500,000 or less that blow the doors off a DA50 RG and I’m talking more than speed, range, payload and comfort. And they will easily fit in a standard T-hangar. Seems the report tried to pump it up, but it’s hard when you’re working at such a deficit.
Larry Weitzman – Hurricane, Utah
Points taken and you make some interesting performance comparisons with the vintage Bonanza. Speed and utility aside, we think the quality-built Diamond DA50 RG simply caters to a different buyer, and time will tell how it sells in the U.S. new-airplane market that’s dominated by fixed-gear Cirrus models, plus a hard insurance market that’s targeting older pilots flying retracs.
NAVCOMM UPGRADES
Your VHF radio buyer’s guide article in the October 2023 Aviation Consumer couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m wrestling with an avionics upgrade for my fixed-gear Cardinal, which has a pair of King KX155 radios, a KLN90A GPS, Argus moving map and King HSI.
After reading the sidebar in your article, I was tempted to call it a day and buy a couple of slide-in Honeywell KX 200 navcomms. But my flight instructor (I’m ready to start my instrument rating training) echoed your advice that an approach-approved GPS would offer more utility. I ultimately settled on a Garmin GNC 355 for the primary GPS/comm and kept one of the KX155 radios as a backup. And at the last minute, I added two Garmin GI 275 flight displays and was pleasantly surprised that the GI 275 with electronic HSI was compatible with both the old King radio and the new Garmin. Thank you for your valued reporting.
Neil Navarro – via email
We think that’s a smart upgrade and offers the best of both worlds. You end up with a modern navigator for WAAS approaches and a backup VHF radio in case the GPS signal goes down. If the KX155 tanks, you could always slide in a new KX 200 without changing the wiring or the radio stack.
TURBINE MODS
I enjoyed the turboprop mod article in the October 2023 Aviation Consumer. At one point I seriously considered doing the Silver Eagle Rolls-Royce turbine modification to my Cessna P210, but ended up with a Beech Baron instead. I just couldn’t get over the paranoia of flying over the water (I do lots of flights to the Caribbean) with one engine—turbine or piston.
The other thing that gave me at least some pause was that the insurance quotes I was getting (this was a few years ago) were a lot higher than the quotes I was getting for my current B55 Baron—and I didn’t have a lot of twin-engine experience. Since then, I heard from other Eagle owners who couldn’t get insurance at all. I’ll stick with my Baron.
Tim Dione – via email