Most of you probably already know that we recently completed the avionics upgrades in N716CD to bring her up to ADS-B compliance as we’ve done with the rest of the fleet. This involved replacing the Mode-S transponder with a Garmin GTX 345 ADS-B compliant transponder (with ADS-B IN and OUT capability, along with Bluetooth connectivity to tablet computers and EFB programs to display ADS-B IN traffic and weather). We also upgraded the Garmin GNS 430W Navigators in 716CD, replacing them with Garmin GTN 650 units (yes, we replaced both of them). That work was completed last Friday (1/19) and 716CD was flown back to UMP on that day.

Montgomery Aviation did the upgrade, and so far it looks like they did a great job. If you fly 716CD in the near future, please feel free to exercise the new avionics and provide feedback (good or bad) describing your results.

Montgomery had offered us $4,500 in trade for each of the GNS 430W units. After looking online at what these units were worth on the open market, we decided to try and sell them on our own.  I posted them on eBay last week with a “Buy-It-Now” price of $7,250 each. We also included a “best offer” option, allowing interested parties to make offers lower than the buy-it-now price. Within a week we received several offers, and we decided to accept offers of $6,750 for each unit. After eBay commissions and postage, we cleared just under $6,500 for each unit. In total, that’s almost $4,000 more than we would have received in trade for the units had we accepted Montgomery’s trade-in offer.

Checks have been received and deposited for each of the units, and the units have been shipped to the respective buyers.