Now here is a guy that knows how to shop!
Steve you have a great panel. Looks like everything is backed up
and then some. I like the idea of the Garmin GPSMAP 496 as a “failsafe”
backup.
"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.