Returned By Seller To Rightful Owner

Avionics Masters owner Jim Scully told AVweb that as soon as the Connecticut State Police contacted him about the DME, he pulled the listing off eBay and shipped the equipment back to the Vecchiarellis. Scully said the DME was in a consignment of salvage items his company bought as part of its normal business — finding and reselling used avionics. The company’s policy is to check serial numbers against an FAA list of stolen equipment and this DME cleared because of the delay in reporting it stolen. Scully said he wouldn’t characterize avionics thefts as common. “They happen, though. We’ve had a few,” he said. Scully said there are some relatively simple precautions owners can take. Besides the obvious actions of locking planes and hangars and keeping the parking areas lit, Scully said installing a homemade security device might frustrate would-be thieves. Most avionics are installed with Allen bolts. Scully suggest cutting sections of a cheap Allen key the thickness of the receptacles in the bolts and using them to fill those receptacles so that an Allen key won’t fit the head of the bolt. “They’re usually doing this at night and when [the Allen key] won’t work they’ll go on to the next plane,” he said. He recommends using a cheap key for the slot fillers because they tend not to fit as precisely as good quality tools and they’re easy to remove with a magnet when necessary.