Hey guys, I've been reading here for years but never had a reason to jump in. I have a 172 with a Horton STOL and fly in the desert southwest. This group seems to be the most like-minded to me so I figured I'd ask here.

My 172 pretty much needs a new radio before I can fly it again. It lives at at towered airport under the PHX bravo. I'm VFR-only.

I'm thinking simplicity is the way to go right now. Get rid of my 2 nav coms, audio panel, CDIs, etc and replace it with a single digital com radio with monitor feature. Some viable options seem to be SL40, TY96a, GTR225, IC-A220T. I could also connect any of those to a portable GPS for standby frequency tuning.

Does anyone here fly with a single com radio plus a hardwired portable GPS?
Does the monitor feature come close to replacing a second radio?
Is the frequency tuning from a portable GPS useful or just a gimmick?

I fly with a Garmin 430W. That is my only radio. It is a great unit but a feature that I wish it had was the ability to monitor the standby frequency. So do not buy a radio that will not let you monitor standby.

I think you have a good plan

I have the same setup you mention in my 206. I run a SL40 and a 796 Garmin. I don't have them linked together. It would be handy when flying to airports that I don't know the frequencies at, but other then that it's really not needed. That said it's a pretty simple connection. If I were doing it again I'd go with a Garin GTR200 or 225. Display is easier to read and a few ore features the the SL40, and not a huge price difference.

I flew pipeline through many Class B airports but not in Class B, only D. Single radio was fine. Standby is fine if you are based there for ground to tower, etc. We changed frequency by clicking to the next one in the old days, and that was IFR. I used the simple Garmin handheld GPS to navigate between end of one line and start of another with user waypoints. If you go out into the desert low, you will never enter Class B airspace. Just use "pipeline + tail number" as a call sign. Don't bother with Approach and Departure. They will be fine with that because at a couple hundred feet you are not traffic to B, only D until out of D low. It makes life much simpler and uses a lot less fuel. And short of IFR clearance, it is safer.

In my VFR-only C180 I’ve been running a GTR225 (w/standby freq monitoring) and Stratus transponder (w/ADS-B in/out) Bluetoothed to an iPad mini w/ForeFlight. It has worked well for me and I’ve not felt the need for a second radio. I do, however, keep a headset-capable handheld within easy reach just in case.

qmdv +1; flying Husky to tower can get real busy with standby freq and no monitor or second radio. A little stressful for me.

Jack, I think you have a good plan.
But I wouldn't bother with linking the com to the GPS.
Just dial in the frequencies as you need them.
I'm not a big believer in com radio memory features...
like I said, just dial in the freq's as you need them.
To me anyways, it's just as easy to remember 123.00, 122.72, & 128.25
as it is to remember which one is memory 1, 2, or 3.

I wound up in a similar situation a few months ago, and needed a new comm radio to replace my old King that melted.

I went to Aerotronics in Billings, which is one of the best avionics outfits in the country. Steve there highly recommended the Garmin GTR 225, which they installed.

I'd go there again in a heartbeat. It has backup frequency, and monitoring, a powerful 10 Watt transmitter, and it's priced about as good as most. I now have ~ 75 hours on it, and I really like it.

MTV

I really appreciate all the responses I've gotten.

I actually just jumped on a deal for an SL40, GTX327 and a GPSmap 396 plus a built wiring harness for a total of $1900. If I went new Garmin for all that it would be over $5000, so I'll go finish my tailwheel endorsement with the savings.

The 396 will really just be a backup for when my iPad overheats, and a placeholder for something fancy to fit in that 4" later. I already have an external GPS antenna and coax cable running right to my panel, so why not?

Sounds like a good solution especially for the price.

I recently ripped out my old Narco mk12d and put in a GTR225 a few weeks ago. So far I really enjoy it. I have an Aera 660 but don't use the memory features much since I just tune the frequencies I need, but the standby monitoring is a great feature on the 225.

Just wanted to give a little update, the project has been finished and I've been flying it for a while now.

I'm really happy with it so far. Including the LED lights I did at the same time, the plane lost about 30 lbs and power consumption is more than halved. This new radio sounds great and has phenomenal range. The monitor function works pretty well, good enough to monitor guard, sometimes not good enough to check an AWOS while tuned in to a busy active frequency. It blocks the monitored frequency when receiving on the active frequency.

Tuning the comm radio directly from the portable GPS isn't actually what the connection is all about. The GPS sends a list of nearby frequencies to the SL40 and getting the frequency from that list using the "RCL" button is really easy and fast. I love this feature.

Jack: one word of warning never remove the data link from your GPS
When the power is on, it will kill your SL40. My garman 496 was having some problems relaying the frequencies to the SL 30 that I had in my Stinson. when I removed the data plug from the 496 it killed my SL 30 COM and the Nav portion and it showed that it had no software in the radio at all it just turns it into a brick. So I had to send the SL 30 to garmin For reprogramming. It was about $400 for that

richw56 wrote:Jack: one word of warning never remove the data link from your GPS
When the power is on, it will kill your SL40. My garman 496 was having some problems relaying the frequencies to the SL 30 that I had in my Stinson. when I removed the data plug from the 496 it killed my SL 30 COM and the Nav portion and it showed that it had no software in the radio at all it just turns it into a brick. So I had to send the SL 30 to garmin For reprogramming. It was about $400 for that

Holy smokes, good to know!

I was told that the current price to send an SL40 in to Garmin is $875.

Yep I was lucky that it was a cheap price at the time about five years ago. I don’t like the way Garman rips you off on software it’s way too expensive. And it’s always been a pain to load new map data. I use ForeFlight now and I’m way happier with it except I don’t like touch screens in turbulence it’s way easy to screw things up on your iPad or iPhone. You got to get everything set up before you leave the ground. I do use my old Garman 196 in my Cessna 170 and I like the old-style push buttons that it uses. I have an updated the software in years

richw56 wrote:Jack: one word of warning never remove the data link from your GPS
When the power is on, it will kill your SL40. My garman 496 was having some problems relaying the frequencies to the SL 30 that I had in my Stinson. when I removed the data plug from the 496 it killed my SL 30 COM and the Nav portion and it showed that it had no software in the radio at all it just turns it into a brick. So I had to send the SL 30 to garmin For reprogramming. It was about $400 for that

This is interesting. That sounds like you may have caused some electrostatic discharge on one of the pins or accidentally caused a short. Just removing the plug shouldn't do anything, the radios function fine without those pins populated. Would hate to brick a nice radio like that.

richw56 wrote:Yep I was lucky that it was a cheap price at the time about five years ago. I don’t like the way Garman rips you off on software it’s way too expensive. And it’s always been a pain to load new map data. I use ForeFlight now and I’m way happier with it except I don’t like touch screens in turbulence it’s way easy to screw things up on your iPad or iPhone. You got to get everything set up before you leave the ground. I do use my old Garman 196 in my Cessna 170 and I like the old-style push buttons that it uses. I have an updated the software in years

Yeah, this thing is mostly just a backup for my iPad/Stratus. Basically something to use that's ready to go for the regularly scheduled iPad overheating. I paid $49 to update the database because the old one was from 2007, but I'll probably never update it again. I don't think I'd pay what people are asking for them on eBay, lol.