Tue, Oct 02, 2007
Box Canyon Crash Kills Three Aboard
ANN has been tracking reports of a DA42 crash for a few days but
due to the vagaries of foreign translation and attendant media
issues, we have only now confirmed that a special purpose Diamond
DA42 Twin-engine aircraft went down in Romania last Wednesday. It
is the first known fatal accident involving Diamond's innovative
diesel-powered twin, though the cause of the accident appears to be
condition/terrain-related rather than airframe-related, as the
aircraft was found downed in a box canyon.
The aircraft was a Diamond-owned DA42 MPP (pictured above and
below), a special purpose camera, sensor and observation platform
that features a number of modifications to the basic DA42
design.
The aircraft (registered OE-FCD) went down September 26th, with
loss of three people, the only ones on board. The 2 Austrians and
one Romanian aboard were involved in a demonstration flight to
perform low-level survey operations in Romania's Carpathian
Mountains. While the investigation is currently underway, there are
no initial reports of mechanical malfunction and no emergency
communications were reported prior to the accident. The aircraft
went down in a heavily wooded area, in a box canyon.
Diamond describes the MPP as a specially designed platform for
carrying multi-functional aerial sensor equipment. "It combines the
advantage of extremely low operating costs with the specialized
requirements of sensor operators. The investment in a multi-purpose
platform pays for itself through the fuel savings alone. The fully
equipped DA42 MPP can operate in all weather conditions and at a
wide range of speeds, from a minimum of 75 kts to a maximum of 152
kts (IAS). In monitoring mode the aircraft can fly for up to 12.5
hours without refueling. The maximum range at 50% power setting is
more than 1350 nm."
The DA42 MPP was specifically developed to carry the following
mission equipment:
- Large format, digital frame cameras
- Panchromatic and multi-spectral line scanners
- Hyper-spectral line scanners
- Laser scanners
- Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
- Gyro-stabilized cameras for high-definition TV
- Gyro-stabilized multi-sensor cameras for law enforcement and
environmental surveillance
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