I've been flying for 12 years now and ~2,000 hrs. 8 of those years and about 1,200 of those hours were in birds with very conventional and rather crummy panels. Back then, that didn't bother me one bit. I enjoyed every bird I flew for different reasons: C172, C182, C206, Cher Six, Seneca II, C340 and a handful of others. When it came to considering upgrades, panel considerations were very low on my priority list. It just didn't matter to me. I was comfortable flying behind anything.

Today after (4) years behind G1000 and the GFC700 autopilot, I find myself with little desire to go back. The situational awareness, rock solid autopilot, everything you need right at your fingertips and the fact that it just all plain works all the time has begun to impact my perspective. Even if it meant waiting a couple more years until I could afford a bird equipped with Gx000 instead of moving up immediately into something that's more capable but with poor avionics, that's probably what I'd do.

Apart from the panel advantages, the other thing I wouldn't want to go back to is the endless list of squawks that seemed to accompany the older, more complex birds. 98% of my flights today are entirely squawk-free and headache-free. I know tprops aren't quite as bad but in the piston twins I flew 98% of my flights had multiple squawks. Any older airframe is going to have its fair share of issues. I'm sure for many that's not a big factor but when you're flying 300+ hrs / yr as I am, you just want the dang thing to work all the time.

I’m very happy with my Turbo Commander 690A. Modern glass panel, good range, performance and cabin. The luggage compartment is huge. So far, running it has been economic and the annual/150 hours have been not horribly expensive.
In order to step up from what I have, I think the costs would be quite a bit more, it would be turbofans and require much longer runways, which in much of Europe means airports which cost 3x as much for everything... I’m flying out of a 2700 foot long runway close to London. The short field performance of the Turbo Commander is impressive.

Patrick,

Did you finally get made whole after the vandalizing/theft of your panel and instruments?

Yes, it’s all good now.