The only big discount I’ve gotten at OSH is oil without shipping fees. Mostly what you get there is the opportunity to see everything, talk to sales people, push the buttons, etc. The savings usually amount to $10 here, $20 there.
You're not buying enough stuff then.
Or, maybe not inquiring enough about deals to get them. They're often not advertised, but if you ask whether they have a show special on something you want to buy, more often than not they do.
I would guess that I probably average at least a couple hundred bucks worth of total savings each year. And honestly, I don't buy much there either. But if you buy stuff you know you're going to need in the next year, it's usually worth buying at the show.
And that's a good reminder about oil. We always buy a case. Bought a case of Camguard last year too. Saved a bit on both.
Desser has deals on tires and tubes at Oshkosh, and will ship them to you for free after the show. I think they're something like 10% off Desser's normal prices. If you normally buy tires through your FBO/shop, you'll save a lot more buying from Desser. When I started buying tires for the club in advance from Desser rather than waiting until we needed one and buying it locally (or as close to local as we could find with the somewhat-weird size needed for the R182 and DA40), the price was cut nearly in half.
I saved about $300 on a set of rubber biscuits for my landing gear this past year at Oshkosh.
If you have a situation where you need a light but they don't have one certified for your application yet, Whelen is pretty generous in supporting your efforts. They'll usually give you the engineering drawings, specifications, and test results to share with the FAA as "approved data" and will sometimes give you the first light for free, expecting, of course, that you'll share the 337 with them to ease similar future installs and buy the second light.
Got it, that is some great info! We are meeting with a Garmin dealer next week to go over our options. I think we're just going to do an ADS-B upgrade, and clean some old crap out of the panel this year. Next year will probably be the big upgrade, with a new GPS and some sort of glass panel upgrade.
I was going to say that you should share your entire plan with the dealer, and see what they recommend. Maybe pre-wire some things and such.
However, if you are only going to do ADS-B now, and do a major upgrade next year, you might consider leaving the "old crap" in place and just doing a Skybeacon or GDL-82 for now so that you're compliant. Otherwise, I think you'll end up with more duplicated work between the stages than would be optimum. Keep an open mind as to what you want to do and when.
