Good Autopilot Install Shops?

Aeroservice at LJBL. I hope mentioning my name can help.

https://www.aeroservice.si

Spessart Air Service in Aschaffenburg / EDFC.

They do maintenance on Piper, Cessna, Commander, Cirrus.
Have equipped a flight school C172 with G5 (x2) and GFC500 and also done quite a few other planes similarly.
Have a proposal to do mine, but not yet doen due to avoiding downtime (estimated at 4-5 weeks)

You can private message me if there are things that you might not want to disclose to the public.

There’s nothing I can’t disclose. Matjaz (the owner) runs great operations with team (including himself) of very knowledgeable and skillful mechanics. They’ve been maintaining my DA42 for 10 years, including avionics upgrades and engines exchange/upgrade. Price wise I can say that I used to cross check their quotations with Diamond service in Austria and Aeroservice was significantly cheaper. Just to add, I’m in no way connected to their business, I’m just a customer.

I think I will be asking a very similar question soon. @Emir would you mind if I mentioned your name as well when talking to Aeroservice? :-)

They have already ignored an e-mail from me two years ago, although back then it was asking for a favor … and I also admit I have not been pushing too much (… I was gathering information on the previous life of my Arrow). Anyway, with that experience, now I am eager to throw all the possible incentives to answer me at them – be nice, ask if they could possibly do an expensive job, mention a name and what else :)

On a positive note @C210_Flyer, the previous owner of my Arrow ordered a big avionics upgrade at Aeroservice in 2019. They have installed almost all I have now, 3x G5, GTN650, GMA350 audio panel, EDM900 and a new ELT. It all works well and the units talk to each other. Since then I opened the panel to add an OAT probe – I now have two probes, one serves the EDM and the other one is for the G5 bus. Doing this job I noted the all the cabling was also done to a good standard. To sum up, no complaints about quality of the work.

I would give a positive vote to RGV at Gloucester. They overhauled my KFC200 replacing a servo and ensuring it now runs on rails. They could have turned me away or tried to upsell me a new system, but patiently carried out trouble shooting and overhauled the unit.

Their main business is higher end SET but am confident they have the skill set to carry out well planned installations. The team is very knowledgeable.

Remember that nobody will post anything negative in an open forum because the owner of the shop will threaten legal action. And we/I’ve had some of these… Some from companies mentioned here

Also, never use an avionics shop for any major work if you are not able to drop in periodically to keep an eye on the job. This is one spectacular case, and I know of others.

We have been here before

Another thing is that a lot of shops have zero flexibility, and will install only stuff for which they have exact STC wiring diagrams. That can bite you in the bum – and after they have the plane in bits.

One “top UK firm”, all the approvals, did this (read under Installer Performance). They threatened legal action over something, too, but the guy who did that work apparently got fired soon afterwards. It was only because I drove up halfway through that I stopped them running the antenna cables right across the rear space inspection door

So always do due diligence, by soliciting private reports.

There are some good shops which actively do not want to be mentioned on forums. It’s not clear why; one reason may be that it is very hard to avoid getting even a single unhappy customer (given the wreckage that many customers bring to the shop) and they are scared of that.