If you enjoy hearing grown men sob, call Garmin and ask when they’ll have an STC to put a G1000 into your 1966 Comanche. Don’t be surprised if the answer is not next week, not next month and not next year. Or, in the words of one marketeer we chatted with, “How does never work for you?”

Embodied in that harsh observation is a certain new reality in the world of avionics development. Increasingly, the haves will be new, moderately expensive airplanes or upper class older twins and turboprops and the have nots will be older piston singles whose designers never intended them to live this long. …