While the ship was in Oklahoma for body modifications and painting I began work on the instrument panel. Following the delivery of the helicopter to Randy's I continued on to John Spurling's helicopter flyin just west of Tulsa. A great time and lots of rotorways. During the flyin I met Tom Uppman who recently wond Grand Champion at Oshkosh (2005). I was ablle to examine his ship, ask a lot of questions and fly with him.
I liked the layout of his main instrument panel and the overhead panel and began to figure out how to duplicate them. I started with a free internet program by the name of eMachineshop. After a few hours of practice I was able to start the design of the instrument panel. Since Randy had the instrument pod in Oklahoma I asked him to send me a cardboard cutout of the opening for the panel. I transferred this to the CAD program and from that made a new plywood cutout for Randy to check for me.
I then started placing instruments in the drawing using all the input and designs from other builders ending up with what I thought I would be a nice panel with its own flair. I ended up a little shy on panel space on the right side so a new printout was placed on plywood and sent to Randy with instructions to modiy the pod to fit my design.
Doesn't sound like to much writing about it now but it took 4-5 weeks and 40 hours
