Has anyone ever had any experience with one of the Diamonds?
A co-worker recently flew one with his son from the Atlanta area to (somewhere in Birmingham) and back. I heard it was a nice trip. And it was related to me that the craft's design is based on a glider's. [Long wingspan and light wing loading?]
I know that some flight schools use these, along with a host of the latest-and-greatest Avionics.
So HOW is a Diamond to fly and to handle?
From what I've gathered, it is a stick control (more like a joystick immediately fore of the front seats), trim in the center console, slider-type throttle, mixture and carb controls. (hmm...interesting!)
It seems that the front seats are not adjustable, but rather the pedals are positionable.
The wings are positioned behind the pilot, affording downward visibility rivaling a high-wing. Alas the Diamond is a low-wing aircraft.
That is as much as I've gathered so far...
What is it like to fly, for those of you have (enjoyed) it?

PS: I've been told by someone I trust a great deal that a 177 is a "dog."
I'm not sure why, but I've learned fast that many people in this space have opinions, much like any other space, I reckon.
Now if there is a plane out there that is a "pig" I'd like to see it. If it's a pig and it flies, I guess a whole lot of unlikely things are going to happen that day that are just waiting for "when pigs fly."

It's also high performance (300hp), constant speed and has retractable gear. It looks awesome, but um I don't think that I could talk to an insurance broker who would look back at me with a straight face. :-)

I'll keep looking...

That book, "Stick and Rudder", was authored by Wolfgang Langweische.
It was originally published in 1944, updated in 1972.

I actually bought it last night, and it is a great read. Aside from saying "angle of attack" at least 118 times in the first three chapters, it clears up a lot of misconceptions of flight concepts and compares the perspective of the engineer and the pilot in describing flight (and what flight IS and IS NOT). Once you pick it up, it is quite hard to put it down. I just read through the first five chapters today on the entire flight from Birmingham to Chicago. Aside from "work", what do you think I will be doing througout most of my four-hour layover?

Wolfgang pays particular attention to slow speed flying and the lessons learned from it -- very much in line with my instructor is doing. Practicing landing without first doing slow-speed flight is what Wolfgang calls "learning to do three things all at the same time...no wonder it is so difficult!"
On average, according to Wolfgang, the student gets a total of "10 minutes" training on actual landings -- a trend I think (my instructor) is reversing, as he promises to call "go around" on multiple landing attempts -- even when I am two-feet from the ground and about to touch down. Yikes!
(Hey, you never know when an "obstruction" will suddenly appear and foul the runway -- or when the controller cancels your landing. One must be prepared to act promptly and safely...)

Flying nothing but a 172, naturally I always look at Cessna ads.

The 172 is a great trainer, and could possibly fly a family, but seems limited.
By comparison, a 182 seems more capable, but perhaps too much airplane (OK, not as complex or big as the six-seat 205, but you get the point).

The 177 (Cardinal) seems like a good compromise -- range and capacity will allow for reasonable travel, and fuel consumption is not too great to make the weekend solo out of the question.

Stick and Rudder -- I know that book (author has a German name). In fact, I discovered this title the night before your post at a local Barnes&Noble while away on business in Alabama.

I already understand the tradeoff between speed and altitude, but I suspect that I will have a different perspective on this after completing slow speed and stall training...!:)

Here is what I did -- I went online to e-Bay and found a simple AVComm headset with passive noise reduction. It cost $99 brand new.
(OK, so I was a little schkeeved at using a "rental" headset and didn't see the need to get into a David Clark headset)
Know what?
It works like a champ -- I dare say better than the DC rental that I originally went out with... it is light, the volume and mic are good. Only complaint is that sometimes it seems to work it's way back towards the rear of the cranium...but that could just be an adjustment issue.

Eventually, when I own my own plane, I may go out and get a better headset as the PIC and relegate (this one) to passenger use.... maybe.

Dan,

It's funny that you mentioned "slow flight" -- because that is exactly what came next!
Oh, and we're not done with slow flight yet. The object is to continue with slow flight and "work into the stalls" as was explained to me.
As it turns out, the stall demonstration I had was delivered by a (substitute), or someone else filling in while my regular instructor was away. It was he who recognized the need to skip ahead a bit and go into stalls to deal with my apparent timidness with maneuvers in normal cruise flight...

Now in slow flight, you quickly recognize the need for right rudder. It is one thing to READ about things like P-factor, but quite another to FEEL it. And to know WHEN it becomes more and less of a factor. Also, when all of your flying is at 70 knots or less, you're always one step ahead of getting into the stall region. As I creep down to 60 kn, I am always either using the throttle or pitching downward.
I can quickly see where all this slow-flight becomes important in the syllabus -- after all, where are you likely to encounter slow flight maneuvers? During takeoff, landings and go-arounds. Where are you most likely to stall? No, not while cruising at FL10...

Funny you mention a tendency to pull back and pitch up -- where might that happen?
Of course, if you're getting low and see trees coming at you, psychologically you have a tendency to pitch up rather than pitch down to gain airspeed. But pitching up will make it more likely that you will go INTO the trees... and so the lecture goes.

It's a lot less scary at 3,000 and 4,500 feet rather than 300-feet above the trees... hence the slow flight training and "working down into the stalls."

Due to work schedule and bad weather, I've had only one slow flight lesson and one ground school lesson since I began this topic.
But in the coming week, I will have two more flight lessons (weather permitting!) and so will have more to discuss about slow flight and stalling... to be continued!

--dAve

Recently I had an emotional rapture of sorts -- facing my fear of falling, er stalling.

I don't want to sound over the top, but this was more of a hurdle for me than I had thought, and removing it is like the removal of a big sinking weight. (OK, that is a bit over the top, remove head from clouds and return to 500-ft below ceiling, please...)

Sometimes you just read a lot about something, you imagine what it's like, you add a little imagination, and it just takes off from there. What you envision often makes a rapid departure from reality, and it becomes something scary and a source of constant anxiety even if it is ill-deserved.
This was definitely one of those times.

It was holding me back a bit as everytime I banked the plane, something that perhaps I could roll into somewhat smoother, I had this silent fear of entering into a spin. Everytime that I climbed, or added power, I was certain that I was going to push the limit and enter into a stall. Yes, one can easily see how this can be a limitation to one's progress. Being timid and backing off does not engender one with advancement of piloting skills, particularly when there is no valid reason for it.

So one sunny afternoon, as I was getting into ever deeper banks and alternately learning to hold airspeed, hold altitude, and make endless ascending and descending turns, and trimming for level flight (all of which was going somewhat well, by the way), the subject of stalling came up.
It had come up during the previous session, at which time I had said "No thank you, not today. Maybe next time."

With a sense of deja-vu, I found myself once again chanting the mantra "No, no no. Not today, next time..."

Well this was not to be.

"No, not next time. TODAY. We are going to do it today and you will see that it's really no big deal..." He said this with a degree of determination that was rather compelling.

"OK."

I dutifully brought us back up to 3000 feet as instructed. Understandably, the lead time was a bit extra smooth... honestly I was in no rush to get there. Slowly we ascended past 26, then 27, then 28, then 29... until we just creeped up to 3000. [Gee, can you tell that I was trying to put it off a bit longer?]

At that point, I heard the semi-ominous words "I have the controls..."

Oh yes, he was really going to do it. "No big deal. "

Cognitively, I believed it. On some level, there's a degree of trust and it was a strong trust, and so far nothing had ever happened to erode away at that trust. So this was probably in fact NOT a big deal. Somewhere deep inside, I knew this was true. But when you face something that is unknown, there is a level of second-guessing. Quietly I thought to myself "There is 'no big deal' -- and then there is 'NO BIG DEAL'. This guy says he's into acrobatics... what is no big deal for him is not necessarily no big deal for me..."

OK, so there I was in silence, he had the controls and we were about to do this thing at 3000 feet. On the way up there I was asking about the 3000 feet, and just how much altitude we expected to lose. 500 feet? "Oh no, not even 100 feet, IF THAT. Probably not even close."
After a few seconds to process this I asked "And this feels like...?"
"Oh, you won't even feel a thing!"

I was starting to wonder if we were in fact talking about the same thing. Indeed, maybe I just didn't know what it was that I was asking about...?

So finally, we had the flaps down, we lowered airspeed and I watched it slowly drop as we continued to fly. Yes, the plane continued to fly.
We dropped below 70... then we reached 60. "This is it!" I thought - after all, the magic number of "59" was in my head. But no, this was NOT it. We had the flaps fully extended. And in a 1975 C-172, the flaps go all the way down to 40-degrees.
We continued to drop - 55, 50. The horn was blowing. This is "it?"

No, we contiuned to drop airspeed - 45... 40. We were down to 40 knots and we were STILL FLYING!!

I observed that we had all this warning -- it was clear that a stall doesn't just happen. We had to WORK to set up these conditions. It took some time -- there was fully 10--15 seconds of that stall warning horn sounding. If you didn't get it by then...
[Oh, and by the way, who invented that thing? Like a duck saying happy new year...Clearly, someone, somewhere has a demented sense of humor!!]

And then it happened and it was over in seconds -- the plane stalled, we dropped maybe 10-feet and we pulled right out of it.
THAT IS ALL THERE WAS TO IT!

Immediately after that, I had a demonstration of the "other" kind of stall, a power-on stall. This is a good thing to know, as it may happen during take-off.

To accomplish this, we went to full throttle and began to climb at a really RIDICULOUS angle of attack. This was an angle of attack that you would NEVER be in. How steep? Well, I was aware of being more and more vertical. Nearly on my back. The more vertical it got, the more nervous I felt, but I continued to talk through this.
I was amazed by the fact that a 172 could be so nearly vertical.
Yes, it really was!!

Finally we stalled -- for half a second we fell, immediately pitched forward, and just as immediately we pulled up and we were flying again. The end.

Yes, that was all there was to it.

After all of this, a greatly relieved soul comfortably made a few more turns and flew straight and level towards home. Well, relatively straight and level...
But in any event, I was content at knowing that I was never anywhere near the point of testing the plane's limits, now that I know where they are.

I also have to concur with Gary's comment about the 152 - "two lightweight people."
Not only that, but it's also a bit "cozy" in there.
I've never been in a 152. I booked one once, but was never in it. It got bumped up to a 172. As the instructor put it "If you want a 152, go get yourself A JOCKEY."

As for getting a light sport plane - well, there seem to be two schools of thought on those. I've had someone relate an experience with a hard landing and damaging the landing gear. From this he concluded that LSAs are built light and are therefore somewhat fragile compared to say, a 172 or a Warrior. Potentially, they can cost a lot of money in repair bills... so my initial thought was that on top of requiring pristine clear weather to fly in, you'd be frustrated by the amount of hangar time needed to keep up with it. Murphy's Law suggests that when the shop is ready to release the plane to you, it will be on a rainy day that is unsuitable for sport flying. When the weather is more amenable, you will not be available. Yes, we need to work for a living, and probably as well need to work to pay off that aircraft loan, insurance and stack of repair bills as well. The weather will be beautiful on Wednesday and poopy on saturday and sunday for weeks on end... right?

The other argument is that sport planes are in fact built quite strong - they MUST be built strong, for they are constructed of light airframes.

For me, the bottom line is that I do not want to be the first kid on the block to own one, but would carefully look at it. Tried and true is good, and frankly I do not live in sunny California, but rather live in the Hudson Valley area of New York and frequently fly in Southern New England.

So for now, there is no verdict on either, for there is a fatal atraction that's holding me fast, how can I escape its irresistable grasp?

I had the same thought -- in fact, I had met someone in my travels who started out really concerned that the aircraft he was training in were going to get sold out from under him. This encouraged him to buy his own aircraft, and eventually he got into a business leasing them.
But time out. One quickly realizes that it just isn't so. Apparently, no one is in a rush to buy a flight school plane. They are not going anywhere anytime soon. Often you will see an ad posted for a 172 for example, and somewhere within the ad the seller will state "NEVER WAS A TRAINER" or some other hint (like posing the entire family in front of it, or stating "one owner, privately used" or something similar).
I can personally say that I've been training for several hours in the same 172 and I never feel a lack of confidence in the airworthiness of the equipment. In fact, this particular plane had suffered some serious damage in an accident 5--7 years ago. It would probably cost about $50,000 to fix it had it happened today.

This brings up another point - damage history. As one person bluntly put it, "If someone tells you that a 30-year old plane has no damage history, they are LYING." Since you are NEW to the world of flying, how do you *really* know what you're getting into?
What is the likelihood that you buy a used aircraft, then find out at the next annual or major overhaul that it needs MAJOR work? What if that "$25K plane" turns out to cost twice that much in mechanical work (hence the reason for the quick sale...)

The only thing I can determine at this point is that you would pay for a thorough mechanical inspection prior to sale. (I wouldn't use a mechanic recommended by the seller)
Not only might this protect the buyer, but I think it's good for the seller as well - he/she doesn't waste time with people who aren't serious. I think that a willingness to pay for an inspection is a clear demonstration that you are serious about making an offer.

As for ownership of a trainer -- one risk is YOU and your needs. Right now you're training and learning to fly. Pretty much if it's cheap and gets off the ground (and an instructor is willing to get into it) that would meet your needs. But what about after training?
Will it have the utility you need?
If not, what will you do - sell it?
How much of a loss will you take?
There's something to be said for renting a "wet" plane by the hour and then walking away from it after the session is over. Repairs and maintenance are not your problem.

As far as a leaseback is concerned, do you really want other students flying your plane?
What if it's damaged while out with someone else? Sure, insurance can take care of that. But while it's in the hangar, it's not available for use. So either you're not flying or you're renting something else. Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of owning your own aircraft?

On a discovery/intro flight --
One of the things that I noticed was that while the instructor's mic worked flawlessly, the one on my headset always cut off the first word of every sentence. This apparently did not impede communication throughout the flight, as perhaps he anticipated most of my comments, having heard them perhaps hundreds of times before.

Toward the end of the session, after we had landed and were taxiing our way back to the terminal, he advised "I have trouble hearing you. Your mic is too far from your mouth."
(Yes, at the END of the flight)
He went on to say "You have to be swallowing it. It comes in many flavors!"

Thinking how many people before me must have used this very same loaner headset, I replied "My favorite flavor is -- MY OWN!"

And yes, that is exactly what I bought next -- MY OWN headset.




--dAve

Personally, it scares me to see these programs advertised in flight magazines.
Phrases like "Zero time to First Officer in a jet in six months" are particularly onerous.
I imagine myself sitting on a regional CRJ somewhere where potentially half the flight crew had never seen a flightdeck less than a year ago!

From the perspective of the prospective pilot, I also wonder how much the hiring airlines are aligned with the vision of these training academies. Are they really hiring those with less than a year experience?
Are they really hiring into the positions you expect?
The reality of the carriers may not meet with the expecations set by the trainers, or certainly not for everyone. You may find that you count yourself lucky if you are among the few chosen right out of flight school with little experience but lots of talent, or you may find yourself paying your dues along with the rest of the pack, waiting to get that coveted seat.

It would be interesting to see what kind of experience those of you out there actually have... and if it lived up to your expectations in the end.

--dAve

My two cents...

Actually... I have found that you SHOULD have renter's insurance --
and it only costs a few hundred for the year, payable upfront in advance.
Both the AOPA and the EAA offer policies through underwriters... I am sure there are others, but the .org's of course offer discounts to members. Check it out on their page(s).

The issue with the school's insurance is this... the rental Agreement will say that you agree to pay the deductible for any damage to the plane that is your fault. This is fine -- but does this include "loss of revenue?"
What if the plane is booked up for weeks, and you inadvertantly suffer a "prop strike" -- this could result in damage to the engine. I really never thought about this until I began to peruse ads, and found a plane for sale that stated in the ad "had a prop strike -- both the engine and prop are new."
I would imagine that a repair like this would have the aircraft down for weeks, if not months.
Does their insurance cover the loss of revenue as well as the cost of repair?
This would be a good question to ask before you get behind that yoke or stick!

What "renter's insurance" would cover is the deductible and anything else for which the school's insurance company might come after you... up to your coverage limits.

Oh yes, then there's personal liability, including bodily injuries to others and property damage other than the plane -- does the school's insurance cover this? Probably not.

For the amount of money a premium would cost, it seems like a good idea to have this in place, to avoid getting into trouble. It's already costing an arm and a leg to get licensed, one needn't lose the other arm and leg as well on a liability claim.

OK, now for a really dumb topic -- ownership.
Is there ANY sense in owning an older plane for training oneself -- that is, based at same airport as flight school, using local FBO?
I guess it will come down to # of hours training and ownership expenses vs. renting a wet plane from the school. And of course, acceptance by the instructor (read: oh no, I'm not getting in THAT thing with you!)

It gets really attractive when you see some aircraft -- for instance I am upstate NY and local to two schools -- Richmor Aviation (Poughkeepsie, NY) and Arrow Aviation (Danbury, CT). I like the latter and had my first "experience" in a Warrior.
So in Albany, NY there is an Alarus CH-2000 for sale, about 7-years old and with an asking price of $40K. For half that, something that seems similar to a Warrior (called a PA-28, I think) is for sale. Kind of old.

I guess it really comes down to how many hours one expects to be flying, the variable costs of owning an "old" plane, tie-down rates and how many hours to the next MOH (the Alarus seems to be a 2400-hr motor, the Piper a 2000-hr).
All of a sudden, $114--$158 an hour for a wet plane that runs 9gph or so suddenly seems very reasonable -- but then I have NO CLUE what insurance would cost, nor FBO, not even tie-down.
I'm afraid to ask!
And then there is the 2000-hr rebuild --- any clue?
(yes, depends on when/where)