Diamond DA40 Diamond Star Checklist

What the Diamond DA40 Diamond Star is

The Diamond DA40 Diamond Star is a four-seat, single-engine, low-wing composite airplane — the fixed-gear touring and training sibling of the DA20, and one of the safest-record light singles flying. It arrived around 2000 and is built from glass-reinforced plastic rather than aluminum, which gives it the long tapered wings, the bubble canopy, and the smooth skin that make a DA40 easy to spot on any ramp. This template centers on the Lycoming-powered line: the baseline DA40-180 and the XL, XLS, and CS variants, all fitted with the fuel-injected 180 hp Lycoming IO-360 burning 100LL avgas and turning a constant-speed propeller. It is important to separate that from the diesel DA40 NG, which uses an Austro turbodiesel, Jet-A, and a single FADEC power lever with no mixture and no prop control — a genuinely different airplane to manage, and out of scope for this card. Who flies it: university and academy flight schools that value its docile handling and crash record, IFR students who want a stable glass-panel G1000 platform, and private owners doing efficient cross-countries. Pilots transitioning from Cessnas notice the differences fast — a fuel selector with LEFT, RIGHT, and OFF but no BOTH, an “alternate air” induction door in place of carb heat because the engine is fuel-injected, and three fuel drains instead of two. This card keeps those type-specific items in front of you.

The DA40 is the airplane I send people to when they want something modern and honest to fly. I built this card around the Lycoming DA40-180 because that is the one most schools rent, and I deliberately kept the no-BOTH fuel selector, the alternate-air door, and the canopy/rear-door latch checks up front, because those are the three things that catch Cessna pilots moving into a Diamond. Print it, add your tail number, and fly the numbers in your own POH, not mine.

Normal procedures

The normal flow runs preflight and walkaround, before-start, engine start, taxi, run-up and before-takeoff, takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, before-landing, after-landing, and shutdown and securing, with a DA40-180 V-speed table. Three type-specific items sit up front because they catch Cessna pilots moving into a Diamond: a LEFT/RIGHT/OFF fuel selector with no BOTH, which means actively balancing tanks within the imbalance limit; an “alternate air” induction door in place of carb heat, since the IO-360 is fuel-injected; and the canopy and rear-door latch checks, which the card keeps in the preflight and before-start flow. The start flow also has you confirm the opposite tank actually feeds.

Emergency procedures

The emergency and abnormal section is deliberately conservative, with the reflex memory items in bold. It covers engine failure on the takeoff roll, engine failure after takeoff, engine failure / rough engine in flight with a restart attempt, a power-off emergency landing when there is no restart, engine fire in flight or after takeoff, electrical fire / smoke, alternator and total-electrical failures, and a set of DA40 type-specific abnormals — a door or canopy open in flight, an unintentional icing encounter, and landing with a defective main tire. Note that the engine-fire sequencing here follows the sourced checklists, which defer fuel and ignition cutoff until landing is assured rather than treating them as first-and-second memory actions; nothing in that flow is marked as a memory item on purpose. This is a training aid built from operator checklists, not the AFM — verify every step, and the memory-item set, against your POH with a CFI.

Verify it against your POH

The research behind this template flagged several things that genuinely vary by variant, serial, and source. Check these against your aircraft’s approved POH/AFM before you rely on the card:

• This is the Lycoming line, not the diesel NG. Every fuel, mixture, and alternate-air item here assumes a fuel-injected IO-360. The DA40 NG’s single FADEC power lever changes nearly every power-management step — do not use this card for an NG.
• Engine-fire sequencing. The sourced checklists defer fuel and ignition cutoff until landing is assured rather than treating them as first-second memory actions. Nothing in that flow is marked as a memory item here on purpose — confirm the current type-specific sequence and any memory items with a CFI against your POH.
• Vx (best angle of climb). This appeared in only one of the two checklist sources reviewed; Diamond’s own operator table left that cell blank. Confirm the published Vx (or its absence) before flying it as a fixed number.
• The V-speeds themselves. The table is DA40-180-representative and the sources differ slightly (a 2015 mass-banded operator checklist versus a 2024 single-figure set). Reconcile against your specific serial’s POH.
• Max fuel imbalance. It depends on tank type — roughly 10 USG for standard tanks versus 8 USG for long-range tanks per the sourced operator checklist. Confirm the limit for your aircraft’s tanks.
• No short/soft-field procedure. No distinct short/soft-field technique was found as a standard DA40 procedure in the sources, so none is invented here. If you need one, source it separately for your model.
• Landing-gear warning-horn behavior. Reports of a nuisance gear/flap-power aural warning came only from a pilot forum, not an official document — treat that as anecdotal, not a procedure.
• XL / XLS / CS deltas. Three-blade versus two-blade prop handling and PowerFlow-exhaust effects on leaning were not separately researched; this card treats them as identical to the DA40-180 baseline, which may not hold in every detail.