@Thomas, IFD540 has a slightly bigger display than GNS 530. You may have confused it with IFD440. Or do you mean you want to keep the 530 and install a second GPS? Again, it’s a matter of taste, but having two navigators with substantially different user interfaces (whether GNS + GTN or GNS + IFD) is an ergonomic abomination.
If your aircraft is N-reg, then having a freelancer do the installation has no downside at all.
Sounds like €100,000 and it was a typo.
Anybody quoting that number is taking the p1ss and is arrogantly telling you to sod off and go and bother somebody else. Moreover whoever it is is arrogant enough to not care if somebody posts it somewhere. I wonder who the company is?
At 140 EUR per hour and assuming that slightly over half the quote is labour, that roughly equates to someone working on the aircraft for 10 weeks solid, 8 hour days, all day every day.
10 weeks. Two and a half months on a 9-5 schedule.
For 140 EUR an hour, I’d expect a bit more than someone who was teaching themselves avionics installation 101 as they went along.
The rub, as is the case in many businesses where you hear a lot of small violins about how the hourly rates aren’t enough to make a profit, is that the time-to-task is usually grossly inflated. The simplest example is where you collect your BMW from a service and pay a bill which includes 2 hours labour, but in actual fact it took ~20 minutes of one tech’s time to change the oil and verify that it still has the correct number of wheels.
I remember 3 years ago I was quoted €75k (plus VAT) for GFC700 upgrade. Diamond estimated 250 hours of labor and parts were some €40k.
Someone I know paid 80k for a somewhat quite similar bunch of avionics. Same autopilot upgrade and more or less same avionics.
The plane’s a real beauty now. New painting, very good job done, new LED lights all over, and that bunch of avionics. If I remember correctly it took the very best part of a year, not including the paint job that was already done before.
A year is outrageous.
Ahem, it is still in the shop.
I would expect no more than 200 hours of labor, probably less. Using a labor rate of 140, that is 28000 for labor. Parts at list would be under 50K So anything more than 75 to 80K is exorbitant IMHO.
I would also suggest you consider the GTN 750Xi rather than the GTN 650Xi and include a GMA35 or 35C audio panel. The 750Xi is a more useful MFD and with the newer audio panel, you can get the space back and the ability for push to command voice control over the GTN and audio panel. I find the latter very useful in turbulence.
NCYankee wrote:
The 750Xi is a more useful MFD and with the newer audio panel, you can get the space back and the ability for push to command voice control over the GTN and audio panel. I find the latter very useful in turbulence.
Very valid comment! I have never used the voice control feature as our planes don’t have it, but it must beat the touchscreen. Two 172s in our fleet have the GTNs, one 750 and one 650, and I find operating them in even moderate turbulence to be rather challenging. This btw is where the Avidyne has an advantage as it’s both touchscreen and button operated.
172driver wrote:
This btw is where the Avidyne has an advantage as it’s both touchscreen and button operated.
And in addition to the buttons on the panel, Avidyne also offers a separate wireless QWERTY keyboard, which you can keep wherever you want – instrument panel, pedestal, kneeboard, whatever.
