Back in the day if your aircraft sported a Ryan Stormscope, you might lead the way around buildups just like the heavy iron did with ship radar. Today, many owners are yanking old Stormscopes and StrikeFinders from the panel in favor of datalink radar. After all, your trusty portable GPS saddled up with satellite weather tells you everything you need to know about storms. This argument is highly debatable, and that’s why there’s still a market for traditional lightning detection gear. The good news is that the used market is littered with models of all vintages to choose from. There’s also the high-end Avidyne TWX670 and proven WX500 Stormscope, both of which are compatible with many existing displays.

An icon in the experimental market, Dynon Avionics has built a reputation for offering cutting-equipment that’s easy to install and widely compatible. Dynon’s value-based pricing is practically a smack in the face of the certificated world, where twice the price gets you half the capability. Skyview represents a fully integrated cockpit suite whose nearest equal is something at the G1000 level. Retrofits are fair game in nearly any LSA and experimental, and it’s a top seller for new LSA purchases.

Mag compasses live hard lives. They bake in the sun-splashed heat of the windscreen. They sustain endless amounts of airframe vibration, which not only makes them a challenge to read with accuracy but also contributes to ultimate failure. You probably don’t think much about the compass in your aircraft until it spews its fluid all over the instrument panel and you realize FAR 91.205 requires you to fix it. Replacement options are slim and while a vertical card model is considered a step above the traditional whiskey design, installation technique is critical, and surprisingly expensive.

The reoccurring head-shaker in the NTSB reports is the pilot who wrecks a perfectly functioning aircraft because of mismanaged fuel burn. But the truth is that eventually even the most conservative gets tempted to push the envelope of fuel endurance. That’s why a fuel computer installation makes sense, and there’s one for every budget. Speaking of budget, fuel computers assist with miserly leaning—a real plus in the world of pricey low lead.

Back in the day, you were top dog if your panel sported dual KX155 or MK12D digital navcomms. These days, that same panel begs to be upgraded to all-in-one navigators while the standalone navcomm plays second fiddle as backup. But that doesn’t make the navcomm radio extinct. For IFR flying, you’ll want the second comm radio while a backup nav receiver could be handy for raw data crosscheck on an RNAV approach. For basic LSAs, a standalone navcomm might be the only radio you’ll ever need.

Touchscreen may be the top buzzword in avionics, but synthetic vision (SV) is right behind. Many pilots don’t know why they want synthetic vision, or even fully understand exactly what it is, yet the gee-whiz factor alone has made SV systems the most sought after upgrade we’ve seen in a while. Whether synthetic vision is worth the non-trivial expense depends on your mission and your ability to absorb a lot of overlapping data on small screen.

The way we see it, any cockpit with more than one seat has to have an intercom. Yet some stark LSAs, ultralights, gliders and pre-electric-system classics go without. Given our ho-hum experience with portable intercoms in the past, the performance of DRE’s new 205e stereo portable was a welcome surprise.

Remember overlaying your ADF needle on an Argus moving map display? This is what started the ball rolling on dedicated MFD displays. Years later, Avidyne revolutionized the big MFD with the original FlightMax series. But the upgrade demand for standalone MFDs has plummeted to near extinction. The first salvo was Garmins 530, whose screen took the GPS navigator to the near-MFD level. The new GTN 750 now crosses the line with every major MFD feature save ships radar. On the other end of the scale, most MFD map functions are mimicked by aeras, iPads and the like-and for far less cash.

Weve flown and installed enough Avidyne TAS systems to confidently hail them as top values in active traffic alerters. We even proclaimed it the best traffic system in our 2008 Gear of the Year award. It was Ryan that engineered and birthed the twin-antenna 9900-series TCAD back in the 90s. When Avidyne and Ryan merged, the popular 9900BX became the TAS600. With a liberal display potential, its been a brisk seller and popular option for active traffic alerting.The latest evolution in Avidynes TAS logically promises ADS-B functionality, a refreshingly lower price tag and retains a notoriously complex and critical installation process that will make or break performance.

As the fanfare fades, we still think Garmin hit a homerun with the GTN 750 and 650 navigators. As we reported in the March issue of Aviation Consumer, these state-of-the-art navigators offer huge amounts of capability, if at a higher cost than their GNS-series predecessors. But as far as we can determine, these units arent exactly flying off the shelves. A thriving economy or a factory trade-up program would probably change that picture, but neither is true today. Heres a look at some hurdles and tough economics that tag along with Garmins new star of the avionics world and how you might justify buying in … or not.

From the moment light singles started shipping with no pneumatic (vacuum or pressure) instruments, its been the dream of many an owner to yank out the maintenance-hungry vacuum pumps and replace the pneumatic instruments with electric ones. Doing away with pneumatics makes even more sense after a glass panel upgrade where the only item left is usually a vacuum-driven attitude indicator doing duty as a backup. A dry-vane vacuum pump with over 500 hours in service is of questionable reliability. Many pneumatic instruments last over 1000 hours, but thats the exception rather than the rule. There are also the filters to check and replace.

PS Engineering is compulsive when it comes to perfecting and adding new features to otherwise well-engineered aviation audio products. The result is a product line that remains cutting edge and a step above the competition. The newest talent of the line is the PM8000BT.The six-seat-capable PM8000-series audio system earned top-dog status in our audio panel review (Aviation Consumer, August 2009), and that status has held up under long-term testing. We didnt think it could get any better until company founder Marc Scheuer took it to the next level with the logical addition of Bluetooth connectivity-an industry first.