Stretching the DA40 ...

[Antoine]

... to its limits is what we just did, and I wanted to PIREP on this:

My GF and I took two of our kids aged 15 and 16 for a week at "our" island on the atlantic coast of France: Ile d'Yeu LFEY.
Due to expected headwinds it was to be a 4 hour trip split in two.
The plane was loaded to its 1200 Kg MTOW with CG sitting at the aft limit upon take-off.
We also had to do some clever luggage management to place the heaviest items in small luggage pieces we could move around for take-off and landing.
Everything that was not necessary for the flight was unloaded and we took great care not to let the baggage slip backwards within its compartment.
We had just enough fuel for each leg on board to save payload.

The plane took off normally (except for my deliberate late rotation), climbed and flew beautifully.

Our refueling/customs stop at Chateauroux LFLX was uneventful. We took off again after 20 minutes with a bit more fuel as the island does not have any fuel available so we needed to have enough for the way back on board. Chateauroux has a huge runway, so this was fine. Again no issues whatsoever.

As expected, we faced massive headwinds on the way there (up to 38 knots) which forced us to stay relatively low and fly VFR. Much to my surprise, we did up to 150 KTAS on 11 GPH at 6500 feet (I can't help doing some performance testing on every flight!).

Upon arriving at the island, there was no ATIS, so we asked an outbound pilot and learnt that we should expect a 90 degree gusting crosswind from the left. Good thing we asked...

A gust caught us just as our upwind main was touching down. We bounced about one meter high and I applied full power for a go around. This is where the DA40 amazed me again: it just resumed flying with a solid positive climb gradient. It was really easy and I don't even remember what I did in the first 10 seconds.

We flew the pattern and landed safely. The DA40 let me fight the gusts for maybe 15-20 seconds before touchdown and it went well.

I have read quite a few NTSB reports about botched go-arounds in Cirrus planes and certainly the DA40 won my respect on this occasion. Handling and stick feeling were perfect even with the stall horn blaring. It is a strange feeling to be doing this much "rock and roll" at such a low height and with the stall horn permanently on, but this plane did it at maximum loading and CG all the way aft without any problem.

On the negative side:
Kids complained bitterly about sore bottoms and I will address this with extra foam.
We certainly could have used some aft CG reserve to avoid having baggage spread all over the cabin.

Apart from that, everything was perfect and performance did not show much degradation from the heavy loading.
We had a great vacation and kids want to do it again -with the extra padding-

Thank you, DA40

[Steve]

...Much to my surprise, we did up to 150 KTAS on 11 GPH at 6500 feet (I can't help doing some performance testing on every flight!)...

Antoine:

Not surprising to me. If your CG was far aft, you probably picked up a couple of Kts. On my airplane (which can't approach the aft CG limit in any scenario I have encountered) I put as much heavy stuff in the cargo area as possible to minimize the elevator downforce as much as possible.

Steve

[smoss]

For several years, my wife sat in the back seat with my small child, making the CG very aft. As my child continued to grow, my wife sitting in the back was pushing the limit a bit much, and she moved to the front seat a few months ago. With the move, the CG is now about middle range, and with it, we definitely lost several knots of cruise speed. Prior average was about 147 KTAS at 8,500 leaned for max performance, now average max is about 143. Perhaps I should store some weights in the extended baggage area as a performance enhancement

[Antoine]

I was not expecting this much gain from aft CG placement.
My plane has the MT prop and previously it only achieved this kind of speed at very low level and light loading.
This 150 KTAS was 6500 ft and 1200 Kg... and we held it long enough that it could not have been a downdraft.
.
On the way home we flew higher (9000 ft IFR) and it was a hot day.
I could not achieve 150 KTAS (more like 146-147).

But still, this is enough to warrant some serious thinking about easily removable ballast.
I can see two obvious locations.
Under the nose landing gear strut and
Around the tail fin.

In both cases it should not be a big deal to make ballast installation easy and the ballast itself highly visible so that it cannot be missed during preflight.
We then need to add an item on the checklist: Ballast check against W&B calculation

[Colin]

I have the Oregon Aero seat cushions in the back. No complaints from the 18yr old and 16yr old.

[Charbie]

I have struggled to keep the c of g within limits. Two males in the front seat less than 180 pounds each, two females back seats, 125 pounds and 110 pounds and out of limit with the extended range tanks. Standard tank planes, no problem. Since I'm new to this, is there any way to keep it within the limits? I'm looking for ideas, or am I being too conservative? MT prop and MTOW increase to 1200 kg.