Thanks for the number breakdown Glenn, that's really pretty pitiful performance by the plane, and great performance by the marketing guys!

Yeah the web site makes it look like 180 knots at altitude on 9GPH. Very sneaky. Didn’t realize all that. Not looking good.

I like the Diamonds a lot - great airplanes to fly! I currently own a DA62 for example and it’s a really nice ride. I had the chance to switch my 62 order to a 50 and passed on it for a lot of the reasons discussed above, plus (1) i like the second engine, (2) i like having radar and (3) I like having 86 gallon tanks vs. 50.

The wings are essentially identical between the two minus the two engines. The tanks in the 50 are the same tanks as the main tanks in the 62. The 62, however, has two aux tanks on each side with 18 gallons each … Diamond opted to use the tanks they had rather than designing and certifying new, larger tanks. Agree that the range is, in my opinion, a serious limitation and crippling in many use cases for similar aircraft.

You can dial back the 62 also and fly 135 knots if you like on something like 8-9 GPH if you want, and then you can fly that thing for something like 10 hours when you start with full tanks. That’s the use case for the MPP version of the 62, which is designed to loiter on station for many hours. Nobody on this forum going point A to point B would willingly fly 40-50 knots slower … but the safety element of these Austro engines (which at those power outputs perform very much like a Rotax in terms of fuel consumption, in the 4-4.5 GPH range) is that if you make a fuel miscalculation or have to do a long diversion for weather, you can throttle back and basically get where you’re going eventually without a fuel emergency. You might have a bladder emergency, but not a fuel emergency! You should not run out of fuel in a DA62 if you started with anything significant in the aux tanks (assuming full main tanks).

But the 50 gallon tank size limit in the 50, coupled with weight and balance considerations, doesn’t quite give you the same safety advantage to be sure.

Cabins are essentially identical between the two (when compared to the 5-seat 62 version). Given that the prices are very close (which makes that second engine a bargain in the 62!), I just don’t see why anyone with a cross-country mission of any length would choose a 50 over other, more capable singles (Cirrus, Bo, Columbia and others) unless you really, really need to burn JetA, in which case, you should spend a little bit more and get the 62 in my view. It’s a solution in search of a problem from my perspective…

The long wings don’t bother me given that I use a community hangar situation but obviously that’s a constraint in the 42, 50 and 62 for people who have a standard T hangar - completely understood.

Cheers

Do the DA62 cruise numbers match the POH pretty well? From the POH it looked to me like it burned 2/3 the fuel of a baron at the same altitude and TAS.