>>1344020They are nice planes and offer excellent light twin performance, at the expense of maintenance problems. Now my experience comes from flying the DA42NG IVs with the Austro AE300 engines. The ECUs are pretty buggy and will fail somewhat regularly, but those are fairly simple to reset. The engine management by the ECUs is okay but has issues with fluctuating power development. The ECU-controlled governor has had a couple issues too. The more serious problems occur later in the airframe’s lifespan. The glass fiber-reinforced plastic has a tendency to de-laminate and weaken in select areas, mainly around the door hinges, gear doors, flaps, and ailerons. The plane is designed a bit odd; lots of thought to performance numbers but not much consideration to the longevity or ease of maintenance. The propellers are of a wood core/composite/aluminum LE construction and are really light, but they are damaged very easily by FOD. We’ve had a few problems with the G1000 suite in it, experienced only by the Diamonds and not the C172s which have the same avionics suite. Altimeter settings changing on their own, and autopilot issues; kinda spooky lol. Single engine work requires lots of rudder compared to other twins I’m told, though that was told to me by others. But usually we can hold level SE at 11000ft DA so I can’t complain too much.
