A tale of 2 panels
I, along with Scott Hersha recently completed an upgrade of our friend and fellow River Rat Greg Reese's instrument panel in his RV8. Greg brought his plane to our hangar Nov. 1 and left 6 weeks later with this!
Greg's plane had a vacuum 6 pack, GRT EIS, Aft battery, Navaid wing leveler, Icom radio, King transponder, Garmin 496, etc.
He left with; 2 screen Garmin G3X system, remote Garmin Transponder, GX autopilot, Dynon D6, Dynon heated Pitot,Garmin 430, PS engineering PAR100EX as Comm 2, Tosten stick grip, Archer wingtip Nav antenna, a Composite Design LSA switch panel and new Glareshield lighting!
We had great service from SteinAir, who designed and cut the panel and supplied the avionics. We also used the Approach Fast stack hub. Greg had recently installed new EGT probes, so we used those but got all new other engine sensors.
Greg's installation was done last week, but he was away for a week of airline flying, which left Mutha a week to work on his panel.
Before!
and After
Mutha is now good to go for IFR after adding; a D100 for backup ADI, swapping the Dynon pitot for the heated version, swapping the SL40 for a 430 and PAR100 EX for 2 comms, adding an Archer wingtip nav antenna, Dynon HS 34 (mostly for dedicated course and heading knobs), Trig remote transponder(for Mode S traffic), and just to stay a generation ahead of Greg in something, a Garmin 796!!!!
Paul Story at SteinAir designed the panel and they cut it. The guys at SteinAir also supplied Mutha with a beautiful Avionics schematic so that he could build his complete harness in only a day and a half!
We kicked Greg out on Saturday!
and Mutha got to fly his new panel on Sunday!
Next up for Mutha is new interior side panels and carpet from Abby at Flightline Interiors to complete the resurrection of Mutha's ride, in time for a return to Sun n Fun 2012!!!
Ok! Fast forward 9 months, as Stein predicted, this panel would not be my last!
Who knows how long this one will last!