Great Lakes Diamond Aircraft Sales is the Diamond Regional Distribution Center for the Great Lakes region, serving Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. We are the national distributor for the Diamond Xtreme Motor-Glider. Through our network of affiliated new aircraft dealers, Great Lakes Diamond Aircraft Sales is your exclusive source for new Diamond aircraft in the Great Lakes Region.
More of our history »
Diamond Introduces DA42 Engine Conversion Programs for North America
North American owners and operators now have the choice of upgrading their DA42 with either Lycoming or Austro Engine power. Also available are numerous options to turn any DA42 TDI into a virtually new aircraft, with all the features of new production DA42s.
“The best part of upgrading your DA42 TDI with new engines is that you will not only enjoy enhanced performance, reliability and comprehensive North American-based after sales support, but also reduced operating costs and increased value and marketability of the converted airplane,” said Peter Maurer, President of Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc. “In addition to performing conversions of customer aircraft, we will also have a limited number of converted aircraft available for sale that offer significant savings over comparable new aircraft.”
Flying Dixie Chopper Air's DA40XL, Kay Brown and Jessica Campbell finished a strong 2nd in the college division and 8th overall in the 2010 Air Race Classic. Congratulations to the team! Air Race Classic
Paul Bertorelli visited with us after Sun & Fun to fly one of our Motor Gliders with Andy James. His video is below, and it is a very good overview of this special aircraft
This event is held annually at Clow International Airport west of Chicago. This is the 11th year for the Cavalcade, and we expect to exceed last year's 8000 attendance figure.
New to the event this year is the EAA's Ford Vintage Tri-Motor, offering tours and rides.
|
|
|
As in past years, there will be many manufacturers of new aircraft: Diamond, Cessna, Cirrus and an assortment of LSA's. We be displaying (weather permitting):
Where else can you see the latest new aircraft in one place? Come on out to Clow on June 5 & 6.
Customers call us frequently looking for Diamond training or rental. In order to better fill these requests, GLDAS now lists both Diamond Flight Centers as well as unaffiliated flight schools offering Diamond rental and instruction.
On our Training page, you will find these listings, including the number and type of aircraft available. These are self-reported by the flight schools, and while we do our best to help them keep their listings current, GLDAS offers no guarantees that the information shown is current.
About Diamond Flight Centers
Diamond Flight Centers are a special class of flight schools: they are an exclusive group of schools committed to providing high-quality flight training using Diamond aircraft and Diamond-specific flight training simulators. They are hand-selected by Diamond and GLDAS and must meet demanding standards. We require them to develop and utilize a set of Standard Operating Procedures and structured syllabi focusing on Diamond aircraft, ensuring that the total training experience will be the best in the industry. click here to learn more
Great Lakes Diamond now has downloadable Motor Glider Brochures and Fact Sheets in Standard Units not metric.
Please visit our Motorglider Page where you will find these documents.
In the February issue of AOPA Pilot, Thomas Horne reports and posts a video on his test flight of the DA42:
I was fortunate enough to fly a DA42 NG on a 250-nm cross-country, from the Diamond factory in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, to Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany. Along the way, maximum continuous power true airspeeds worked out to be 176 knots at 92-percent power, burning 8.2 gph per engine. This was at 8,000 feet and at plus 2 degrees C; I was told that we’d have gone seven or eight knots faster at 10,000 or 12,000 feet. Except for navigating the hodgepodge of controlled airspace along the way, flying the NG was a breeze. Just set the power and the FADECs do the rest. Like all DA42s, the NGs come with Garmin G1000 avionics suites, but what’s new is the bezel-mounted, integrated GFC 700 autopilot; earlier DA42s came with Honeywell Bendix/King KAP 140 autopilots. The GFC 700 lets you automate your flying to your heart’s content. The FLC (flight level change) function, for example, even lets you climb or descend at selected speeds or rates. Garmin’s synthetic vision technology (SVT) will soon become an option.
And the video is posted on our Media Page
Have been moved to the new Media page. Also available there are high resolution photos of Diamond aircraft.
GLDAS now has an HK36 demonstrator available in Northern Illinois.
Please contact Dan via email or (800) 962-9437 x0
Diamond flew the new DA42 Twinstar with the Lycoming power plants to AOPA Expo in San Jose, CA. The aircraft looks great - both the engine nacelles and the new control quadrant show great fit and finish.
As for performance, the numbers speak for themselves:
Click here for the new performance statistics.
Aircraft
Maximum Cruise
Rate of Climb (SL)
DA42-NG
185 KTAS
1150 fpm
DA42-L360
180+ KTAS
2000 fpm
GLDAS is now accepting orders for the DA42 - L360, and deliveries are scheduled to begin by the middle of the first quarter, 2009.
Contact us for ordering and pricing information, and stay tuned for a more verbose DA42 update, which will be sent by early December to our DA42 customers. If you wish to be added to our DA42 mailing list, please indicate so on the contact us page of this website.
