I believe it is better to buy a plane already IFR certified, it's cheaper. Also the older radios are way obsolete, the newer equipment is much easier to use, but possibly more expensive.
For example, a Garmin 430 GPS was the cats meow, I haven't been tracking the new replacement, but they have come down. They are lighter weight, and do a lot more. King has some nice GPS units, but by far the best stuff in my opinion is *anything* that has a moving map. Most of the moving map stuff is not "legal" for IFR approaches, you are supposed to fly the Glideslope, or VOR navaids in most cases. Depends on where you live to some degree. For example, in Phoenix, I flew in a flying club Mooney that had just been equipped with a UPS moving map (now Garmin). I flew into Montgomery field using VOR and the GPS unit on approach, thinking that all my equipment was IFR legal. Turns out that if I had relied on the GPS only, I would have been busting regs, as the unit was only certified for VFR only. Mainly because it requires a IFR checkride for the radio shop, somthing that they don't do in Phoenix unless you pay extra $$. I talked to the folks at Pacific Coast Avionics here in Oregon about a Garmin upgrade, was plane shopping but it never panned out. They told me that if I did an upgrade, I would need a second set of radios, otherwise your plane is out of service for a long time, as although they can install, and IFR flight check the plane, it was taking weeks or months to get the FAA paperwork back from the FSDO. In Oregon, if you don't have IFR equipment outside summertime, you can be grounded due to weather often. Another factor in higher cost IFR certified planes is the mission profile. Many IFR planes are used (in theory) by businessmen, who want to travel faster, so you will see the higher costs. Once tempted by an autopilot, for example, you will want an IFR plane that has one. It will most often ALWAYS cost you more to have IFR equipment installed in a plane, than to find one with the equipment already installed, unless it was just done as part of the sale. This is known as Murphies law. You see an ad price for an install, ferry your plane to where-ever the installer is, and pay for the installation. Then, a month after the install, you notice that one of your pannel instruments, isn't quite working, or that one of your other radios goes out. (An installer in the Phoenix area, let metal flakes get into one of the King RNAV radios in the club Mooney when the Moving map was installed.) This was a bummer when we determined that with the RNAV radio out, the plane could not be flown IFR, as the GPS stack replaced the COM1/NAV1 radios, and the backup RNAV/VOR was the unit that made the plane IFR legal. No matter that it was probably safer to use the UPS GPS than to fiddle with the knobs and program RNAV waypoints. The downtime was a bummer, as I liked flying the Mooney. The parts shop may have helped pay for the repairs, but the flying club, and the investor who owned the plane, and just paid for the GPS upgrade, lost money, as the club couldn't fly the IFR that month, but the investor still had to make his loan payment. The other factor, in my opinion, is that the avionics industry, is FINALLY moving out of the 1930's and away from the old steam gauge VOR needle sets and to the moving map displays. This means that after you go through all the fun, and trouble of learning VOR/RNAV IFR enroute and approach flying, you will really want to have a moving map. This makes the older avionics less desirable, and possibly cheaper. However, if they fail, it may be cheaper to replace them with new stuff. I don't own an IFR plane, so I can't really comment on the expense. For my rental & future planned KR2 flying, I have a moving map GPS/COM handheld (GPS190) that I use. If a NAV fails in a rental aircraft, I would have a backup, or if a COM fails. Also, when I flew IFR in the club Mooneys, I had it yoke mounted, and it would readout ETA. If I had a major electrical failure it would be my backup and is a good way to maintain situational awareness in IFR. I work with computers, and enjoy interperting the VOR needles, but believe that it is all to easy to get 180 out and not notice it for a bit. Harder to do with a moving map. All this is my opinion. If you can it would be fun to pick and choose what avionics to plug into your Cessna 150/172 or Cherokee 140. But the labor to have it installed, and the time you will be away from your new airplane may be hard to dealwith... unless it's winter time, and you can't fly anyway. -- Ross On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 03:19:31 -0900, Thomas Brock <t...@arctic.net> wrote: > I'm looking at a lot of planes but have noticed the higher > cost of aircraft that are IFR certified. I know that the sky > is the limit on avionics equipment, but there must be some low > end ball park figure on the cost or value of radios to meet > the minimum IFR certified requirement. So my question is: > about how much (little) would a person have to spend to > upgrade a VFR C150, 172, or Cherokee 140 to an IFR certified > aircraft? How valuable or how much value does IFR capability > add to a small aircraft? Is it usually less expensive to buy > an airplane that is already IFR certified OR is it less costly > to buy the IFR equipment after you buy your VFR small plane? > > Thanks much for your replies. Thomas > > > > _______________________________________ > to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net > please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
