Hi Chris,
You really need to take a serious look at what some of these guys said and perhaps given your budget the best option is to do it yourself.
Most of the professional shops (like us or Aerotronics) will expend at least 100-200 man-hours per panel, sometimes more, sometimes less. The typical builder will spend at least 3-4 times that amount if they figured out their total labor including laying out/drafting a panel layout, cutting it, mounting all of the components, racks, trays, fitting switches, fabricating buss bars, fitting circuit breakers, crimping all the terminals on the wires, 4-5 hours of hand lacing all the finished bundles, painting it, labeling it, etc.. all BEFORE you ever turn a single thing on. Then, it'll take at least 6-12 hours to get everything programmed, tested, integrated, etc.. Without going into a long boring detail, suffice to say with the shops that do this for a living you are getting a service that in it's basic form converts money into time. Realize the full service pro shops spend extra time on things like the painting/labeling, hand lacing all the bundles, programming and interfacing, and usually at least a couple days worth of bench testing that often includes a fill pitot/static run, full transponder check, full VOR/ILS Cal's, etc..
On a relatively simple panel the value probably isn't there for you, but on higher end stuff where you're talking 40-50K worth of avionics I can almost guarantee you that wiring it yourself is a very major undertaking. Hourly rates for most reputable avionics places range from $70-100/hr which might seem high until you come take a look at the equipment, training, facilities, tooling, and FAA paperwork we have to keep up. I just bought a Mode S transponder test box....the price would frighten most of you! Price out the cost of having a full time GPS signal generator inside a building and that will scare you as well!
I'd suggest the following. Buy your avionics from a good, reputable dealer that will provide you with interconnect harnesses. Stark is excellent for this, as are many other shops including us. Many of our customers don't have us build the panel, they just buy the pieces - we wire them up and you put it together. Most of the EFISes you buy come with pre-made harnesses (we happen to build most of them), as well as Autopilot harnesses, etc..
If you find a shop willing to do your entire panel for $2K, I'd say caveat emptor. Indeed we have done some for not too far off that mark, but they are VERY simplistic. The reality is you're probably better off trying to do it yourself. You may find a talented individual who'll do the work for you directly, but without direct support from mfgrs like Garmin that the bigger shops get, you're sort of gambling on the outcome. Best bet is to buy your equipment from good mfgr recommended dealers and do it yourself. You'll learn a lot along the way and might even enjoy it! There have been a lot of good posts in this thread, and don't forget you can always come back here and ask questions. You'll notice that a few of the more experienced shops (myself and Jason from Aerotronics) regularly try and help people with their questions on this forum, even if they didn't buy the stuff from us and there are some pretty sharp homebuilders on these forums as well to help you out.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if your budget doesn't allow for one of the more well known shops to do the work, the next best thing is to do it yourself. Settling for something in between means you're giving up something. There are a lot of people on this forum who've done their panel themselves (the majority) so I can guarantee you it's not that bad....but I can also guarantee you it'll take a LOT longer than your initial time estimates.
Stop by at OSH and I can show you in person where the hours add up!
Cheers,
Stein
PS, somebody asked about the most expensive RV panel...we did one that was north of $130K, but we also did one that was less than $10K in totality! Walk through our shop and you'll see everything from single screen Dynon panels to G900X equipped panels, and everything in between.
