It was my first experience with a high performance retractable plane... it is a raging beast no doubt. We climbed out at over 1000FPM - on a high density altitude day in KY. I was glad that the air-conditioning was working.
The AFH said it was 1100ish pounds or 800ish with full fuel. Which is interesting given that it had oxygen and de-ice... yet Im expecting mine to come out at about 750 with full fuel.
I was expecting the plane to be just like a DA40... but bigger. That wasn't the case at all. It felt a lot more like driving a big suv. I was happy about rudder trim and the yaw damper. Somewhere I had heard something like ... if you close your eyes you'd think you were in a da40... which is total bullshit.
The extra room in the plane is great. In my 40 I have the pedals all the way out... in this plane I had to move them back to put my feet on them... and my wife's feet don't touch the floor in the back in this plane.
I suppose that I have been spoiled by the visibility in the 40... and the 50 is not nearly as good.
The wind was 18G28... which wasn't the greatest for getting a feel for the plane. But... I flew up/down/around.. .did a stall (approach only) as they don't want you to do a departure stall in that plane. I did some steep turns... The turns were interesting with the ESP pushing you away from 45 degrees.
I shot an approach back into 27K and setup for T/O flaps only landing because of the crazy wind. We cross the fence at like 105... it settled into the ground effect and touched down nicely even with the crazy wind... (though the lifestyle guy put in a bit of left pedal on me right at the end)
Im looking forward to delivery of my plane... which looks like it might be August. Apparently the FAA told them that they were going to certify around Oshkosh... but really who know... they also thought it was going to be certified 2 years ago. So we will see.
Alan
