When I was shopping for an affordable (that means “old”) Bonanza, one of the mods that I really wanted was a “center stack” panel. V-tails of my vintage came from the factory with 1950s automobile-style panels. All the heading, attitude, airspeed and altitude data was there, but you had to hunt for it and then pull it all together in your mind’s eye. The center-stack mod placed all the radios in a single stack to the right, and the critical instruments on a floating panel in the now-standard T-configuration in front of the pilot, greatly relieving a lot of the mental gymnastics.
But compared to the Avidyne Entegra primary flight display, my panel looks more suited to a Civil War-vintage submarine. Of course, as a $24,500 option on new Cirrus SR22 four-seat piston airplanes, the Entegra costs about half what my entire airplane is worth–and if I wanted to buy one from Avidyne without the SR22 attached, it would be about $46,000. But for someone footing the cost for a new Cirrus, the Entegra option looks like a bargain.
