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Comment by Patrick Hoyt on November 21, 2009 at 8:13am

Home-made Lift Reserve Indicator on the far left, Dynon D6 next to it. Big hole in the middle is for Stewart-Warner tachometer. Small holes are CHT, EGT, Oil Pressure, Oil Temp, Volts, Amps. Leaving space for GPS or AvMap on the right side. Space marked out for Transponder and eventual panel-mount Radio (initial plan is to use my hand-held). Have my Fuel Gauges, Tank Selector, and Fuel Pressure Gauge on smaller center panel.

Planning of the instrument panel began with making paper cut-outs the same size as each instrument, placing them on the panel and moving them around until things looked about right, and then temporarily attaching them with tape.

When I felt the instrument layout was pretty close, I clecoed the panel into place and sat in the cockpit to check the look and feel of everything. Some things that looked good when the panel was sitting on my workbench didn't work so well when I was sitting in the cockpit. One example was the placement of the throttle in relation to where my knee was, so I made some final position adjustments of the paper cut-outs.

At that point I took accurate measurements of the actual instruments, and replaced the paper cut-outs with line drawings made directly on the aluminum.

Most of my instruments are either 2 1/16 inch or 2 1/4 inch, so I bought hole saws in those sizes. For the remaining "odd sized" instrument holes I used an adjustable circle-cutter.