w1curtis said:
Engine first! Engines change little over time, avionics will potentially go obsolete before you finish your kit --just look at the glass cockpit section to see all the happenings with avionics.
Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast. While what you say is true, it is also true even if you wait to the last minute. By the time you get the electronics installed and are flying with them, they will also be superceded by enhancements and new products.
I think there are a couple of important questions to ask yourself when making this decision. Will the electronics that I'm considering at the moment serve the flying mission that I want them to? In my case, most of the electronics out there go above and beyond my light IFR mission, and I find myself concerned more with redundancy than the components. Another question to ask is, will the electronics I'm considering at the moment take me well beyond where most aircraft are today, especially those that I am used to flying? If so, they should serve you for a good long time.
The final question, and maybe the most important question (if you buy into the fact that most of the vendors are building some nice equipment), is which of the vendors will survive/fail? I'm of the opinion that there are way too many LSA vendors and way too many EFIS vendors to survive. Some will fall by the wayside as a part of our free enterprise system. Which are they? As experimentalists, we would like to think that more than just the "big guys" would survive, as it appears that it is the "smaller guys" that are the most innovative and spur the others onto better technology/features/prices. Yet to survive and serve their purpose, they need our funding. Quite a catch-22; buy from the small guys because it fits our experimental personalities better and benefits the industry, at the risk that they will not be around in a few years. Most of us do not have the money to risk, especially when talking about major cost items.
I'm a computer consultant and these are the same questions I ask my clients to consider when deciding what and when to purchase new equipment.
I am also at this decision stage and am asking myself the same questions, so I am interested in others' opinions. I've pretty much made the decision to go with electronics first, and am deciding which ones. I think Dynon, AFS, GRT, BM, Chelton, Garmin, OP, etc., etc. all make some good equipment and it is cost and the "fail/survive" question above that will drive my final decision.
Anybody else have another perspective?
