Is it worth it, that question can’t be answered universally.
For myself I would say that it was worth it, because it was part of what I aspired to. I wanted a plane with preferably a KFC150/200, HSI and Flight Director as well as a good GPS with GPSS function. The plane I bought had a GNS 430. So I added an Aspen EFD and an Stec 55x and upgraded the GNS430 to WAAS . The plane I have now is in terms of capability close to the Caravelle and old DC9s I wanted to fly. Or even the 300 series 737. With LPV it was briefly even more capable than the A320s on the field.
My first post upgrade flights were pure joy. It was now that the plane became my potential forever plane. The avionics was what I wanted. And still is.
Obviously such an upgrade will out cost the value of the air frame. But if you buy a new Cirrus, you also loose a lot of value very fast.
What boscomantico said is very valid. Many buy a solid air frame with old avionics and make it their own. It is a costly exercise but worth it for one’s own satisfaction. Just don’t think you can get the money back selling it.
I think 100k panel upgrades are actually very rare.
They just get an awful lot of promotion afterwards…
Most avonics shop work is putting in stuff like transponders, on jobs where a syndicate got five quotes. The shop has to make a living from that kind of business, which is not easy. This is why most shops are not exactly friendly; if they were doing 100k jobs all the time they would be positively lovely and would be posting all over the forums 
The biggest issue by far is finding a shop which can do a good job. Most avionics installers are just wiremen; they have little understanding of the signals. They do a “design” by putting together stuff from the wiring diagrams in the back pages of the IMs, and if it doesn’t work they phone Garmin for help. The UK has almost no good shops at all now. Well, none I know of that have design capability for nontrivial stuff, and I speak to a lot of owners. This is the main reason I don’t have LPV (GTN650+750 or 2×IFD540).
There are certain well known firms on the mainland, with a “fanatical” reputation, but if you speak to their customers privately you get the same stories which you get from the others. The main difference seems to be in the willingness to sort out issues, but this depends a lot on the “favoured client” status (read: from the same country, and a regular customer). Most highly positive forum posts are actually from favoured clients. Well, some are also from shop employees 
It is a much tougher business than most think. One UK firm, possibly the most competent one, has recently stopped doing piston GA work.
Is it worth it? Well, you won’t recover it upon selling, so you have to write off the cost over your ownership. I would rather spend money on full TKS, and TAS/TCAS1.
It also ties you to the dealer totally. If something packs up, you usually can’t do DIY swaps on glass stuff.
The biggest problem with large installations is that the pilots are not sure what the kit will do and the Avionic shop don’t understand how the pilots Wish to use the kit.
The result of this communication disparity is the pilots find after a bit of using the kit that they can’t get all the functionality out of the kit because they have driven the price to rock bottom and the avionic installer has not interconnected all the kit because they had only been paid for a basic installation.
I am sure this is true, in some cases.
However, with the complexity of this gear, and the money exchanged, it is also part of the job of the company taking on the job to point out beforehand what is included and what isn‘t.
I was always wondering if there is any reason for choosing 3xAspen (Aspen 2500) + JPI engine monitoring vs Garmin G500 txi with EIS?
Heard of at least a couple of installations of 2500 on a light piston twin (sub-6000lbs both). In both cases backup instruments were already there.
I mean, why?
arj1 wrote:
I was always wondering if there is any reason for choosing 3xAspen (Aspen 2500) + JPI engine monitoring vs Garmin G500 txi with EIS?
There are some reasons:
- Some people simply don’t like Garmin
- Some people like the idea of having 3 screens instead of 1 – if the core display fails, there is more redundancy with Aspen
- Some APs and other boxes work together with Aspen but not with Garmin
Peter wrote:
Most avonics shop work is putting in stuff like transponders, on jobs where a syndicate got five quotes. The shop has to make a living from that kind of business, which is not easy. This is why most shops are not exactly friendly;
Absolutely! The core challenge with these jobs is, that most owners underestimate the work and esp. the risk of doing such “minor” installations. There basically is no such thing as a simple installation in a 30 year old plane – even opening and closing the panel w/o changing anything brings the risk that some wires break, connectors get loose, etc. leading to many hrs. of bug-tracking and fixing.
It often starts with the problem, that the owner can’t hand over a wiring diagram that has something to do with reality …
I just got back from the avionics shop. They already have a waiting list for installations that goes as far as april 2021. Can you imagine what would happen if ADS B became mandatory in Europe for everybody ?
I personally believe it will
They already have a waiting list for installations that goes as far as april 2021
It could be that a lot of people have not been able to fly due to the virus so they decided to do upgrades, perhaps? The sort of people who spend money are probably not wanting to just fly in circles, and international flying has been hard. Also I am sure most older people are a bit worried about their exposure… So it’s a good time to do stuff. And reportedly avionics shops were affected by the virus too, reducing capacity.
