Lots of good tips and suggestions, guys! All are much appreciated!
Iflylower - Beautiful panel on the 195. I love the flush mount on the dual G5's. I priced some custom panels and the sticker shock is incredibly high on those things. I'll probably end up making my own. No CNC quite yet, but I do have a manual Bridgeport with ballscrews and a DRO, that I could probably make my own panels without too much effort. I love the plexiglass idea. I might have to copy that one to ease the the placement/clearance process.
Keith
Tanker - that's the point on making your own. I'm not the autocad guy, but I mostly knew how I wanted the panel. Did the same thing with my exp supercub panel. The 195 is mostly free space behind the panel, the cub, not so much, plenty of structure bars to get along with. So, make your own panel. BTW, I think its great to lose the plastic and make your own and you have a free space to create your masterpiece. If you're capable with the bridgeport, you should have no issues. I have about $200ish into making my panel with aluminum and cutting and paint.
Get a piece of 2024 aluminum sheet in the thickness that your plane uses. I like .90, but maybe too much for you. Use your panel outline and trace and cut it out. Jig saw if you have to and smooth edges. Match drill your mounting holes.
I recommend making simple circle and square cutouts of your instruments and future instruments to lay out in a practice panel and figure your scan and where you want instruments located that make sense and that fit old harnesses and wiring and cables and such. Don't go too far off the reservation if you want a faster project. I recommend doing a panel in plexi so you can just fit, spacing, alignment and look though to see if adequate spacing to structure or controls behind. See if it looks good, you'll be staring at this panel for hours. Make sure your happy with it. Not so much on this panel, but the cub I put the most used in the center, with cascadeing important scan moving farther out on center line.... And you won't have this, but in the cub, I made sure that radio was on the left for freehand freq switching and xponder on the right that is seldom manipulated. Same with mixture and carb heat left.....
Use a fly cutter for the circles. If you want to do the flush g5's, use the bridegport with moving table and cutter along a layout line. Work your radius corners with a proper cutter bit or file. Spruce sells 2 1/4 and 3 1/8 jigs for instrument cutting and proper square holes for mounting if you like. U can even use a routter with jig to make a shaped cutout.
All is doable, just work your layout, cut your plan. Paint or powdercoat your panel, mount up and go fly.
I've included the fixture that I made to mount the g5's behind the panel and how they mount. There are a few ways to do these, but none mount as flush as I like. But, so many ways to skin a cat - you can even leave it on top of the panel mounted into a regular 3 1/8 instrument hole. Best of luck.
I did not end up using the exact behind panel fixture pictured, I moved all my mounting screws to the side for cleaner look and not over the top and under the bottom to panel mount, but you get the idea i hope.... You can see from my behind the panel shot that clearance for mounting screws on the bottom was an issue - thus, I should have tried harder with my plexi mounting. Recut whole panel.
Rick Mercil, nice panel!