D100/120 panel operators that fly IFRbe hard to

Considering an upgrade or two keeping the 100 and 120 and wondering what people have as far as a setup to ease the workload. In particular I would be interested in the setup for electrical redundancy. Wondering if adding a couple items would end up being more of A PITA Than just gutting most of it and going with new everything. The cost of an entire new panel in the 1st gen AC might z

Be difficult to recoupe in the eventual sale. Thoughts..
Mike R

Redbud40 said:

Considering an upgrade or two keeping the 100 and 120 and wondering what people have as far as a setup to ease the workload. In particular I would be interested in the setup for electrical redundancy. Wondering if adding a couple items would end up being more of A PITA Than just gutting most of it and going with new everything. The cost of an entire new panel in the 1st gen AC might z

Click to expand...

Can't help you there Mike but my early vintage D-180 failed completely without warning with a blank screen at an out lying airport. I had back up steam gauge A/S and Alt and was able to fly it a short distant home. It had 400 hrs on it and took 2 weeks to get it back from Dynon where they replaced several circuit boards.

We flew our RV-10 for many hours on a D10A and an EMS D10, then upgraded to the D180, then the Skyview, then the Skyview Touch. The whole time we had an Airspeed, altimeter and TruTak ADI as a backup. By far the cheapest way for you to get some redundancy is to replace your D120 with a D180 and get a backup battery for it. The number of failures like Springer experienced is very low, probably orders of magnitude lower than the number of vacuum system failures. The next simple upgrade would be to add an independent backup like a Garmin G5 or a GRT Mini. Even a Dynon D2 would be a good backup. Obviously, you could spend over $30,000 upgrading to a new system, and you would LOVE it, but only you can determine if it would be worth it. If you are planning to sell soon, then definitely do not do much upgrading. If not, then I would not consider resale value a big part of the decision (a part, just not a big part).

Thanks Jesse, ya it?s a hard call at this point. I am planning on keeping the plane for some time. Since the avionics these days are a huge part of the cost, and they are virtually one screw and pull out, have you ever been ask to sell a plane with or without the most expensive piece say an IFR navigator. IOW sell say a six with an IFD 440, for 70 or without the unit for 60. Obviously it?s all in the buyer?s decision, but just curious if anyone has done that. Use an I pad app for nav for awhile then when more funds available buy a used or new unit for the ready to go space.