Up North Aviation

I received my sectional panel a few days ago from Bill at Up North Aviation. I can't be more pleased with what I received. Everything fit perfectly. Even the holes for the nut plate rivets were the right size and place. I spent several hours dressing the edges of the openings as his machine makes such a perfect cut that the edges are like razors!!! Bill is a great guy to deal with as well. Up front you send him $50.00, a listing of the components you are going to use and an idea of how you would like them to be laid out. He takes it from there and starts populating the cad program and sends you a preliminary layout. After reviewing the drawing you start a back and forth email communication with revised drawings and suggestions, corrections, additions, deletions or any other changes you want to make. Its really cool that it can be this fluid to make sure there wont be any structural or component conflicts etc. When you get to the point that you are satisfied with the layout he sends you a full scale drawing that you can take to Staples, Kinkos or other place like that and have printed. I took that drawing and laminated it onto to heavy cardboard and cut out the major components and temporarily installed them and the panel mock up in the plane. It fit first time and the support holes were right on!!!! I checked for visual problems, switch location problems and just made some airplane noises. There were a couple of minor things I wanted to change and emailed Bill. He made them and sent me back the final drawing for my approval. Four days after I gave him the word to cut aluminum I had the panel in my hands and all of the excess and larger parts cut from the openings. Truly amazing service!! I looked at my email logs and found that there were 86 emails traded during this process. I'm sure that that count is abnormal because I was constantly making minor changes or rearranging things to the point that I asked Bill several times if I could send him some additional money for the time he was spending. He just told me that he would send me an invoice after he sent the completed panel. I was surprised when I received the invoice it was for the original published amount. Needless to say i sent him more than he asked for. Although I am perfectly capable of laying out and cutting my own panel I found Bills service to be invaluable and I am sure that my layout would not have resulted in as good of a finished product and probably saved me from having to order a new blank after I screwed the first one up. Best money I ever spent in my opinion.

Agreed. He did a great job on mine and was patient and easy to work with. Great value.