On Saturday, May 27, 2017 at 6:30:11 AM UTC-7, Dave Walsh wrote:
I think you will find that as DG actually built the 400 they
support it "free of charge" so there should be no DG "tax" to
pay? Could easily be wrong though, ask your local Agent. Even
if you do have to pay the "DG Tax" it's pittance compared to
the overall ownership costs.

My earlier post perhaps sort of implied total trouble free 400
ownership? But very few things did fail, the starter relay for
one. Naturally the U/C collapsed on landing once, but that's
normal, it's a special DG design feature. Generally I found the
DG400 experience much kinder on the wallet than owning a
DG808C.

The reason I suggested joining the "Solo" forum was to
illustrate that even the newer DG (and other) self launchers
have their problems; for a balanced picture join the ASH26E
group too. You'll soon see that there is no such thing as a
totally reliable pylon powered self launcher.

Dave Walsh

Well, Dave, you need to think again. DG calls the tax a "service agreement", which costs 425 euro to setup and 245 euro per year to maintain (for the affected models):

https://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/en/mai...rvice-contract

Tom