Avionics upgrade advice (and autopilot preselect issues)

boscomantico wrote:

That is indeed the biggest plus of the GTN, over a GNS.

This tip really blowing me away, looking at it on youtube in action. I have a non waas 430 I was about to install but now I think it’s mad not to go 650.

Plus with the 650 you get all the FPL transfer to/from iPad, (as long as you use FF or GP). If you use GP, you can even update the databases with your iPad.

zuutroy wrote:

whether upgrading the GNS430 to a W at €4k is worth anything …….. I don’t plan on flying to places that are OVC003 and the IAP at my home airport is a VOR…………….for an IFD440 which can be done for €8k and is a slide-in job. ………..is there anything obvious I might be missing?

WAAS is important. Don’t miss out on it. Your equipment seems a bit older but that doesn’t matter. Your KFC150 autopilot is attitude based (which is much better than rate based), not digital, but what the heck.
Your mission profile seems similar to mine, so when I started IFR flying with my airplane about 2 years ago (a Bonanza F33A with steam gauges) I got myself the following upgrades and that’s all I needed so far for safe IFR flying:

• WAAS upgrade for the 530 (you can upgrade the 430, purchase an IFD440, or get a GTN650). Re the GTN650: Being an IFR beginner, you don’t need handwoven approaches into VFR fields by an artificial “LPV/VNAV” glide path. There were pilots who forgot the mountain that was in the way, so keep that for a later day.
• GPSS roll steering, specifically the S-Tec GDC31 Roll Steering, which allows the KFC150 to follow the GNSS track of your WAAS upgraded device
• Altitude preselect, which keeps a specific climb / descent rate (you don’t have to press the up/down button of the KFC all the time) and levels off automatically.
  For the GPSS module and the Alt Preselect I paid about 2500 EUR, used. Together with the WAAS upgrade it was a little more than 10k, plus installation and work.

The ADL is of course a good thing, no doubt.

I see a lot of votes for ADL. Looking on their website, latest boxes do come with traffic and AHRS. Can somebody do a review or description of user experience for some of the newer boxes? I had a look at the ADL thread on this forum but it goes back a number of years (older units) and covers a lot of bits and pieces.

If somebody has a little time to write up a recent install and use over the past few months it might be useful for everybody.

That ADL thread is current. They have done some new products which have new features, but they are in that thread also.

Basically they all do the same job: send wx data over a low speed subchannel on the Iridium system. This gives you a very reliable delivery; vastly more reliable than 3G/4G on most flying scenarios, and a lot better than Thuraya’s GMPRS service which is “fast” (50kbps), gives you open internet access, but is quite unreliable and suffers from customer service issues (based in the Middle East) and thus no commercial service is using it. It is a relatively hands-off product which is easy to use in flight with minimal distraction, and you get the info you need. Their apps could be much improved, however

Their latest box merges the Iridium with 4G, where 4G is available, which saves costs when 4G is available, but it almost never is unless you are flying so low that, ahem, you can receive 4G And if you can receive 4G then you can get wx from all the usual websites. It won’t usually be georeferenced however…

For the cost of it, nothing else gets even close for the money. All the other avionics cost 10x more at least and do very little (nothing actually, in most scenarios) for mission capability. You just pay out 4-5 digits for a load of very pretty eye candy.

Bump

Any progress on this topic ?

I have a question: do avionics installers give credit for the equipment they remove, eg replacing a 430W with a GTN750 ?
Or do you have to sell it yourself ?

airways wrote:

do avionics installers give credit for the equipment they remove, eg replacing a 430W with a GTN750 ?

That’s up for negotiation – my impression is: Some do, most don’t. Esp. the really experienced installers have their storage full with the stuff that gets typically pulled out.

When I did my install, I sold some parts via pilot boards and the bulk to an used avionics dealer (some have a great business model in intercontinental avionics trade, selling obsolete non ads-b mode-s transponders from the US to Europe, obsolete non 8.33coms from Europe to US, ADFs from Europe to Latam, etc.)

PeteD wrote:

Flog the 430, get a gtn 650 and enjoy “visual” lpv/rnav approaches to every airfield in your database ;-) ;-)

Can the Avidyne unit do that too? For anyone with a GNS it is the chepaer variant as it is a slide in replacement.

I get the impression that for many who snub WAAS upgrades it is a case of sour grapes. I did our GNS430 in 2014 and have not looked back. It is a much better unit, faster, has all the waypoints in the db (which the non-Waas unit can’t do with it 8 mb card) and works very well.

Obviously today it makes sense to figue out if you don’t want to go one of the newer units, so realistically either the GTN650 or the Avidyne 440. but WAAS by all means.

Yes btw and altitude preselect is something very neat indeed. Apart, it would have saved the life of one of my friends who fell asleep while on a VS descent without one.

Golze, I agree. Good choice.