This Navajo, equipped with over 150 lbs. of outdated avionics, had been modified a number of times over the years. It was in need of some good modern IFR avionics and instruments to navigate the east coast’s airspace system.
If you’re already completely overhauling the instruments and avionics in an aircraft that you fly 100 hours a month you might as well make it the way you want it. So we removed the entire instrument panel and cut new panes for pilot, co-pilot, and avionics stack. The new panels were painted and labeled appropriately.
The pilot got a Sandel 3308 EHSI. The co-pilot got a King KCS-55 HSI. The new avionics stack consists of a Garmin GMA-340 audio panel with marker beacon, two Garmin GNS-430 GPS / Com / Vor / ILS transceivers, and two Garmin GTX-327 transponders. Why two transponders? Just try getting out of any large northeastern airport without a functioning transponder. When you use your aircraft for business, you can’t be stuck on the ground trying to get the field’s only avionics shop to fix it Friday at 9pm.
Gone are the old post lights, in come NuLites on each non-internally lighted instrument. To enhance passenger comfort we installed a CD player & changer in this aircraft. The crew can even listen in and not miss radio calls using the Garmin GMA-340’s music input. A power converter was also installed to provide 12 Volt power outlets in the cabin for cell phone recharging and laptop use.