There's only one thing that stops this from being the perfect plane. The pilot sits to far behind the leading edge. There are dozens of copy cat designs that do the same thing. Your cockpit has a beautiful view all around that is blocked by the wings completely. So far the DA-40 has the pilot sitting nearest the leading edge. The pilot should sit on the leading edge or just in front of the leading edge. Why have a cockpit with such an open view then allow the wings to block so much of the view? Here's a clean example of what I mean. Take a look at the Speedstar 850. The wings are set far, very far back behind the pilot. With 4 of the 6 seats IN FRONT of the wings, and the engine and prop and gear box are at the nose way up front. This is an example of a designer building a plane that checks all the boxes. Granted this is a six seater Turboprop, but this can be scaled down to a 2 seater with no problem. I've flown lots of planes and it just drives me crazy that the wings always take away some of the view. Cessna wings block the upper views and Pipers and Mooney's block the lower views.
Let's see it with 200 KTAS.
That requires some altitude, Vne is 170 KIAS.
There's only one thing that stops this from being the perfect plane. The pilot sits to far behind the leading edge. There are dozens of copy cat designs that do the same thing. Your cockpit has a beautiful view all around that is blocked by the wings completely. So far the DA-40 has the pilot sitting nearest the leading edge. The pilot should sit on the leading edge or just in front of the leading edge. Why have a cockpit with such an open view then allow the wings to block so much of the view?
Here's a clean example of what I mean. Take a look at the Speedstar 850. The wings are set far, very far back behind the pilot. With 4 of the 6 seats IN FRONT of the wings, and the engine and prop and gear box are at the nose way up front. This is an example of a designer building a plane that checks all the boxes. Granted this is a six seater Turboprop, but this can be scaled down to a 2 seater with no problem. I've flown lots of planes and it just drives me crazy that the wings always take away some of the view. Cessna wings block the upper views and Pipers and Mooney's block the lower views.