Almost exactly a year ago - I flew down to Zeuhl, TX and picked up N4612B - my first plane. The adventure of getting it to the PNW to its home in Scappoose, OR is a whole other post in and of itself - but we made it - it was awesome and I could not (still) be happier. In the most basic form of the word - it was technically IFR ready - but instruments were - well - you know - all over the place. After flying the living hell out of the plane as-is for nearly 120 hrs - I decided to simply 'rearrange' the existing instruments into as close as I could get to a standard format.

Such as it goes with anything - it turned out to be.... a bit more of an undertaking than planned. Being a new pilot - a first time plane owner and having never performed maintenance on anything other than a pickup a tractor and lawnmower - I found myself quickly in over my head.

Everything was pretty smooth sailing until I went to put everything back in the newly designed panel only to realize that the DG/HSI was too long to allow full aft control of the yoke (ps - there's tons on this topic on BCP). The only solution I could find that would fix this situation was a G5 (or similar - but I picked the G5 - happy to talk about why). This too - then became it's own project - and - given the delays in supply chain - me doing the work bc of long wait times at avionics shops etc etc - it took a lot longer than it probably should have. By the time I got that all sorted out it was annual time - and then for all the same reasons and the fact it was my first one (and I have lots of bad things to say about the pre-buy process) that took a long while too - and begat a new tail beacon and wing tip strobes and position lights (LED), which begat new wingtips and then new prop and mixture controls, moving them into the correct order, new cabin heat pull and vent fixes etc. And then - when I thought it was all said and done - I ran into config issues with the G5 and had a terrible time trouble shooting a new issue with the intercom - but I'm finally happy to say that as of 2 days ago - this part of the journey is complete! Later this year will go through one more rev and add in the 375 - but couldn't wait any longer to get back up and flying.

There are tons of nicer panels out there - but I'm pretty proud of this one and thought I'd share it with this group (pics below). I also wanted to take some extra space and thank all of the people that helped me along the way - without them - this would still be in pieces on the bench in the hangar and I'd still be not flying. So - in no particular order: My dad (hours and hours of phone support unable to see or have any idea what I was talking about), Brian Yablon and Team at Air Sense Avionics for walking me through all kinds of crap when they literally had no time to do so and shared endless amounts of knowledge, Jack Chasuk and the team at Overall Aircraft Services, Kris Anderson at Precision Composites, Dustin for cutting the panel (literally 4 times), the good folks at Everlast Custom Powder Coating, and last but not least my wife for letting me spend that much time at a hangar without her freezing to death all winter.

Looks good and isn't it nice to be able to move along on a project because you can do a lot of it yourself.

Love it! Very nice. I too am a relatively new pilot and just bought my first airplane - a 1955 C-180. I'll be upgrading the panel at some point in the future and it's good to see what others have done.

Thank you! Never enough planning you can do ahead of time. Good luck and I’d love to see it when you’re done!

Thank you! Never enough planning you can do ahead of time. Good luck and I’d love to see it when you’re done!