This old Cessna stack may look ancient but it contains a couple of gems.

For years—before Garmin even existed as a company—the Bendix/King Silver Crown line of digital avionics set the standard for IFR avionics. There was competition, of course, chiefly Narco and various iterations of Cessna avionics. Used aircraft listings in Trade-A-Plane touted “Silver Crown IFR” and for this reason, aft buyers often paid a premium.

Despite the fact that Bendix/King did very little to change the line over the year, up until just a few years ago, digital Silver Crown was still the avionics of choice of aircraft manufacturers from Mooney to Beechcraft. Garmin’s domination of the market ended all this, of course, but one thing didn’t change: the quality of the…