Schadenfreude!

It looks like the high-end recreational product class has seen some modest appreciation over the last 12-18 months - airplanes and boats as examples. This appears to be a demand-supply issue. Higher demand, low supply. During the dark days of 2008-2013 the volume of new aircraft production was very ...

I am thinking of flying to the Bahamas this winter. Flying over water makes me a little nervous. Assuming an engine failure 40 miles from land, how long can you expect a DA-40 to float after being stalled into a calm ocean? I do not expect it to float for long, but hope that it will float long enou...

I used the Halo for a few years. In my opinion the Halo is better than the Bose X. But, when the Bose A20 came out I got them and stopped using the Halo. The Halo is great and they knock out almost all outside noise. However, the Halos pipe in full volume sounds generated by your airplanes avionics ...

This corrosion is not carbon-only related. As any boat owner will tell you, once the composite is penetrated and not sealed the composite will start to delaminate due to water intrusion. If you drill a hole through composite you are supposed to seal the inner surface of that hole with polyester/epox...

DA40s are flown in the American West and South in temperatures well exceeding 100F all the time with no ill effects. Your 95F day is a standard day in many parts of the USA for a large part of the year. But, I do know of a DA40 that blew some rack mounted LRUs when a fabric cabin cover mistakenly co...

Following up on this and other threads, is the WAAS upgrade for the DA42 with KAP-140 and CD-155 2.0s available?

I think that this kind of arrangement could replace the glareshield altogether. I have always thought that the glareshield is the second most dangerous thing in the DA40 - the overly sharp bottom edge of the panel being the most dangerous thing. The way the glareshield juts out always left me with t...

If you are somewhere dry then leaving the plane outside is fine. In South Florida our heat, humidity, and rain destroy aircraft left outside. I think the composite airplanes suffer worse than the metal airplanes, but it a losing proposition either way. If you do not normally use a canopy cover just ...

Wow! I didn't realize I had the very first XL made--40.696. Aluminum prop has served me well with no complaints. Damn...I wish they would have kept the winglets. They are so cool looking. It really is a shame they couldn't find a work around to make the winglets work with the 50 gallon tanks. With ...