On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:27:42 -0500, dave wrote:
I had my 430 upgraded about a month ago in my Bonanza.
snip
I was on the fence about the upgrade but I also
considered the fact that these radios will be around for a long time.

True. The 430/530 are extremely popular and I can't see them being
discontinued or orphaned in any meaningful sense. This upgrade is itself
evidence of that fact. Wish I could say the same for the 480, but I
think we all saw that coming.

When you sell your airplane, any savvy buyer will look at the W upgrade
as a plus.

Given avionics investments typically yield 50% of the initial value upon
resale and the value of the upgrade is now $3000 I suppose I could look
at it as a wash. I should be able to get back a significant percentage
of the original cost at resale time.

The last point for me was the terrain feature. My 430 did not have the
terrain option. It's standard on the 430.

We didn't bother with the terrain upgrade when it became available
originally so we're in the same boat. If the terrain warning logic works
the same as it does in the 396 portable it should be a nice addition to
the cockpit.

My original concern was that the terrain warning logic would be too
"chatty" and distracting, but from a brief overview of the pilot's guide
it almost seems that the opposite is true. The PDA logic graph shows
that the unit will let you be as low as 350 AGL five miles away from the
airport before it gripes. Little scary if you ask me.

I'm curious about others' real world experience with the terrain feature.

Penn Avionics did the work for me. Very nice folks to work with.

Yea, the team at Penn is great and our upgrade reservation is with them.
I've known Peter for a long time and he's always given us fair pricing.

He's quoting $1800 for the upgrade (reservation pricing from Garmin)
without new feedline, or $2200 otherwise. He did our original 430
installation back in 2003 so it's fairly recent, but I'm still foggy on
the feedline specs and whether we'll need to have the feedline replaced.
Guess I'll find out.

One additional cost for me is the new USB programmer, but I suppose I
would have had to upgrade to that eventually anyway as it's becoming more
difficult to find a PC-Card interface on laptops today and my five year
old laptop is just about done.

One perk of the upgrade in the 172 is that no annunciator is required so
we'll dodge that cost.

Doug
http://www.dvatp.com/