Spend the budget on nice trips 
Your aircraft is legal for light IFR airways navigation (IFR GPS and standard VOR/ILS), investing around 10 AMU will not enhance the value or the utility of what is already a good practical tourer.
PeteD wrote:
Flog the 430, get a gtn 650 and enjoy “visual” lpv/rnav approaches to every airfield in your database ;-) ;-)
That is indeed the biggest plus of the GTN, over a GNS.
RobertL18C wrote:
Spend the budget on nice trips
Your aircraft is legal for light IFR airways navigation (IFR GPS and standard VOR/ILS), investing around 10 AMU will not enhance the value or the utility of what is already a good practical tourer.
Could not agree more, top nav accuracy is far achieved by just staying legal
Good quality Audio and AP + in-flight weather may do for top comfort and stress free touring in long trips !
Zuutroy, I think I know this plane. :-) I would invest in a descent audio panel and replace the KX with the new Trig Nav/Com available by the end of the month (easy rewiring from the KX). Alone this will be close to your budget :-). Audio panels are a big job believe me, the interior needs to come out to change the plugs to stereo and a lot of rewiring on the back. From a KMA20 to the new PS engineering ones its about everything to be rewired on the back or replaced with better shielded wire. I know I went from a KMA24 to an apollo SL15 similar to a PMA7000. The easiest upgrade path, as only the intercom rewiring was required. The unit can be plug and play replaced by the newer PS Bluetooth versions when needed e.g 7000BT. The newer audio panels have stereo and additional inputs which you will need when upgrading to a GTN or the newer avionics often requiring some additional audio input capability… I would not spent money on upgrading 20 year old GNS boxes. ADL is a must, much more then LPV capability to stay safe…So Audio, NAV/COM and ADL is my vote on this…non of this will improve your OPS dispatch rate except ADL.:-)
Vref wrote:
Audio panels are a big job believe me, the interior needs to come out to change the plugs to stereo and a lot of rewiring on the back. From a KMA20 to the new PS engineering ones its about everything to be rewired on the back or replaced with better shielded wire.
Seems like something an owner should have done when doing a complete rebuild
It was an option but the EDM got priority at that time..:-). Do the audio panel when the aircraft goes into annual then its less of a burden. Its part of the fun of aircraft ownership. I have seen the insides of my current plane more then ones the last years on all the stuff STC´s and so on that have been installed…The advantage over a cirri…at least you can spread the cost ..:-)
The audio panel is the only bit kit that is connected to all the other avionics so is from a Labour point of view quite a big thing to work on.
If you intend to further upgrade after having the audio panel fitted it is worth getting your avionic guy to wire all the unused unstitched inputs to a plug on a fly lead, that way you can just plug the new kit in without going into the plug at the back of the audio panel, a few Euro spent now can save a lot of time and money in the future.
Yes; changing the intercom (“audio panel”) is one of the biggest jobs, not just because of the vast quantity of wires going into it but because to do it properly you may have to pull out all the wires going to the headset sockets, the yoke, etc, because a lot of “radio issues” are caused by these having been done incorrectly (bad grounding, a general lack of cable shielding, etc).
And the smallest things can take ages. For example, in the TB20, the wires going to the headset sockets run through an airframe section which is inaccessible. They are secured in there, too, so they must have put them in with the aircraft basically in pieces. I don’t know how Mooney have done their original wiring – Socata did it very well – but you never know what you will get and an avionics shop could easily charge a few k for doing just the intercom wiring.
I fly all over Europe and have rarely felt the need for LPV, even in France. Is it worth spending 4 or 5 digits? It won’t make the plane go any faster or climb any higher and those would be really useful things.
An ADL box is dead easy to install (the “installation” is just an extra CB and some wires to the GPS, to pick up the flight plan data to feed to the ADL) and you get radar and IR images, etc, plus as many tafs and metars as you want, on each download. It costs about €25/month. Nothing comes close to a safety enhancement.
I would save the avionics money and spend it on going to nice places
Peter wrote:
you get radar and IR images, etc, plus as many tafs and metars as you want
and traffic, and AHRS on the ADL200
Traffic, how?
What does the AHRS do?
