OUTSTANDING - Up North Aviation

74-07 · #1 03-19-2020, 04:33 AM

I am constantly amazed at the customer oriented suppliers/vendors that help us with our RV projects. Vans, Vetterman, WhirlWind, Dynon, TS Flightlines, and many others have been great to work with when we needed something for one of the three RVs we've owned. Recently, we decided our recently acquired, steam gage, RV-8 needed to be brought into the electrical age. Not a high dollar, IFR panel but rather just a great VFR panel with some electronics replacing the steam gages. After reading about Bill at Up North Aviation, I gave him a call. Bill agreed to help us design and eventually cut our panel. I had no idea of the level of service and attention to detail he was going to provide. He and I sent many, many, ideas, drawings, and measurements back and forth. After each discussion, within an hour, I would receive a new, updated drawing. Twice he sent me full-scale drawings that I mounted on foam board and took to the airplane to be certain everything was like I wanted it. This panel was a little more challenging because I am panel mounting a Garmin 796 without the AirGizmo dock. The cutout had to be perfect. He took the time to scan my unit and then perfect the cutout on scrap.

Yesterday, Bill cut my new panel and immediately sent me photos. It is perfect beyond any expectation. Along with those photos, which I would love to include but I am VAF photo challenged, Bill sent a very reasonable invoice.

So, in short, if you are planning a panel upgrade that will require a new panel, Bill at Up North Aviation has my absolute strongest recommendation. You will be amazed at the level of service and the quality of the finished product.

Jpm757 · #2 03-19-2020, 06:40 AM

Just finished an upgrade to a friends -8 panel that was cut by Up North. Beautiful workmanship and excellent fit. Highly recommended.
https://i.postimg.cc/y62kSL3J/20200304-164027-1.jpg

gmcjetpilot · #3 03-19-2020, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jpm757

Just finished an upgrade to a friends -8 panel that was cut by Up North. Beautiful workmanship and excellent fit. Highly recommended.
https://i.postimg.cc/y62kSL3J/20200304-164027-1.jpg

Nice panel. Can you say total cost of service to cut panel and total cost of panel with all those goodies. If you are afraid his wife will see it, PM me...

D Weisgerber · #4 03-19-2020, 08:48 AM

I have used Up North Aviation for my RV6 and I am extremely satisfied with their product. I am now building an RV8 and they will be my only call when it comes time to cut my panel.

74-07 · #5 03-19-2020, 09:04 AM

I'll let Bill quote the total cost (you can check out his website) but suffice it to say it was incredibly reasonable especially given the amount of attention he gives to his customers.

Thermos · #6 03-19-2020, 09:16 AM

I had a great experience working with Bill. He was extremely responsive and did a great job on my panel. He patiently went through a lot of iterations in AutoCad as I tweaked and refined the layout and I'm very happy with the result -

Full-size picture here if you're interested.

Dave

Boyd Birchler · #7 03-19-2020, 06:01 PM

Bill did the panel cut on my re-work of my RV7 panel. He is very patient; sending me at least 5 tweaks/revisions of the basic panel layout.

He would send me a file, I would transfer it to a thumb drive that I would take to my local Staples and have a full size print out produced on their over sized printer.

I would cut this out with a scissors an hold it up to the plane and then decide to move this or that up, down, left or right; so everything would for sure fit. I would then send Up North an Email making the new adjustments. Bill would then make the changes and send me another file. It was necessary to make many adjustments to make sure everything would fit. Very often moving one thing resulted in a domino effect requiring more changes. The final version was perfection.

When he does the cut: everything is done. I mean every cut out, every screw and instrument hole is there where it should be. All of the radio trays fit exactly. It was precise and perfect.

I'm just now able to start flying my new G3X panel (RV7)and have only 4 hours on it since I started flying it again 10 days ago.

I took 16 months re-wiring my RV7. Virtually everything was changed in the panel, as well as all position,strobe and landing light changed to LED. It would have been a lot harder to do with out the professional help of Up North and Bill!

Vlad · #8 03-19-2020, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 74-07

I'll let Bill quote the total cost (you can check out his website) but suffice it to say it was incredibly reasonable especially given the amount of attention he gives to his customers.

Rob could you reference his website?

74-07 · #9 03-19-2020, 06:12 PM

http://www.upnorthaviation.com/

nedricher · #10 03-20-2020, 11:05 AM

Can't say enough good about Bill at Up North. My panel, although nothing fancy is modular so it can be upgraded by cutting new overlays without replacing entire panel. Essentially he cut two layers of panels, a base panel mounted to the airplane and overlays which screw into the base panel. Also notice the custom cut sides for the air vents. I was very satisfied and he was knowledgeable about the sub panel supports. He corrected the locations I wanted that would have conflicted with the supports.