New Instrument Panel

I’ve been promising a “better” instrument panel in my Van’s RV-4 for the last several years. The time has finally come!

ADS-B

At the beginning of 2020, some significant changes occurred with the FAA and ‘required’ equipment for nearly all aircraft. This change was the addition of ADS-B equipment or “Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast.” In VERY general terms, this is equipment that allows an aircraft to transmit detailed location data and receive the same information from other aircraft (and the FAA/air traffic control). Depending on how an aircraft is equipped, the pilot can see nearby aircraft on a screen in their cockpit (location, altitude, direction of flight, and generally how fast they are moving). There are a few other additional benefits such as inflight weather.

These rule changes didn’t affect me much and since I fly out in the middle of nowhere, I wasn’t required to have the equipment. The negative for me was that I was no longer allowed to fly over 10,000′ MSL. Certainly not the end of the world but that did prove to be a nuisance on long trips where going higher would have allowed me to get out of the heat or find more favorable wind.

The Old

My RV-4 instrument panel was very old, very dated, very ‘patched’, and very ugly. Sad, I know… Here it is before the work commenced. I know… yucky…

The equipment & instrumentation that is currently available provides a huge amount of data over what I had, I wanted to take advantage of that information. I also wanted to add ADS-B capability so I could once again use all that airspace above 10,000′. The ability to have inflight weather (via ADS-B) would be very welcome. Finally, adding the ability to see nearby aircraft traffic would be a nice safety item.

My flying mission is day VFR with a little ‘full moon’ night flying. This means that I fly when it is light and the weather is nice. This type of flying does not warrant the type of equipment required for flying in the clouds which allowed me to keep things simple and relatively cheap! Defining ones mission matters a great deal while designing the panel and electrical system.

The New

Choosing the equipment is usually a bit of a challenge but I have a friends using the Grand Rapids SportEX EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System), they were happy, so I decided to take the same route. The package that I purchased includes their FlySafe GPS module that interfaces to a uAvionics echoUAT ADS-B transceiver.

I elected to completely rebuild the instrument panel reusing only the outside frame of the old panel to retain the location of all the mounting screws. This worked out very well – thanks for the idea Mike! After carefully measuring and creating a template for the new panel, it was cut from .040″ aluminum sheet.

Laying out all the items to be installed and then cutting & drilling is a rather enjoyable task – as long as you don’t make any mistakes!! Aluminum is pretty unforgiving so a mistake means starting over. You can imagine I was very careful and progressively more careful as more time was invested! I’m happy to report that it worked out just fine and my first attempt was also the final result.

I REALLY dislike taking my airplane out of service. A week of that is tough on me, two weeks is nearly unbearable. Obviously, I need more airplanes!! I spent a lot of time planning and designing, inventorying parts that would be needed, and getting everything ordered.

On Saturday (10/23) I went for a nice breakfast flight to Los Cruces, toured the southern border, and then made a run north up the continental divide (similar to this flight from last winter: More Snow on the Mountains of New Mexico!). We were then scheduled to have a wind event for most of the week. I decided the time had come and the work started immediately upon landing.

I had already spent a month or more measuring, planning, and fabricating the new panel. Now it was time to remove the old and instruments and start installing the new.  Here is the old panel removed.

I needed to retain the outside portion of the old panel so figuring where to cut was next.

Now I’m mating the new panel to the outside portion of the old panel.

Then I used plate nuts and recessed screws to attach the new panel to the old panel “frame.”

A test fit was in order to see if all the measuring and planning had been worthwhile.

Moving the radio trays is always good fun.

With all the fitment worked out, it was time to paint and assembling the new panel.

Lots and lots of rewiring and going on…

The time finally came to apply power to the new panel and see if any smoke got out.

I’ve had an engine monitor for years and already knew that it is an very valuable tool. I’ve also been flying with moving map apps (and cellular weather) for a long while. Nonetheless, I wanted an EFIS. Now that I’ve been flying time with it for a few weeks – I am AMAZED and wish I had done it long ago!! The amount of information available and visualizations (e.g. EGT/CHT temps graph over time) are crazy neat.

Eventually I’ll add servos and hook up the autopilot. That’ll be really nice for long trips.

It Works!

Here are some photos taken in actual operation. We are at 11,800′ MSL displaying the primary flight display and moving map in split screen style with engine instruments on the bottom.

This photo shows some of the “gobs of data” that I mentioned earlier. In addition to all the normal stuff, it also shows that we are traveling at 146 kts GROUND speed (167 mph), there is traffic (aircraft) at our 4 o’clock (same altitude, moving away from us), and the wind at this altitude is blowing 4 kts from our right quarter.

This is one of the engine data pages. Interesting info here are the cylinder head temp and exhaust gas temp graphs, 25.1 mpg, density altitude of 12,555′, true airspeed of 144 kts, and 70% power.

I have quite a few hours with the new instrument panel now and I am very happy. The GRT SportEX and uAvionics echoUAT are working great. I love all the additional data and I’ve even shot a few synthetic approaches with it!