"Is AirVenture a good place to buy avionics? "

 

YES!  I shopped very hard for several months prior to Airventure so I knew what the avionics vendors recommended by the various builder websites would quote me.  I decided to hold off for Airventure since new products are introduced and special offers are made by manufacturers.

 

I made about 12 copies of my entire list of avionics and dropped them off at vendor booths asking them to quote on anything they could supply.  I also told them I would not come back to them and ask them to beat a competitor's price so they knew if they had the best price they would get the order.  I was amazed that the "package deal" got me an extra 10% or so better price than I had found prior to the show.  This was from several vendors.  

 

One more thing, I don't recommend Sarasota Avionics.  It was a major hassle doing business with them.  Aircraft Spruce was the #2 bidder by a small amount.  

 

A few comments on my panel.  I wanted a dual efis, single panel mount nav-com (back up is a Icom handheld with an antenna pigtail that plugs into the belly mounted com antenna), everything grouped for best view from the left seat, backup attitude indicator with its own battery, garmin 396 with its own battery, altimeter/airspeed backup and a chart box plus logical layout of switches and warning lights.   With the able assistance of Tom Gourley this is what we came up with and Tom built.  I love it.

 

Steve Colwell   Legacy