I went into the purchase knowing that the panel needed some work. The audio panel was original Cessna, the ADF didn't work, the loran went out of date in 1992, one of the MX300 radios would not transmit, and the intercom was a portable unit. The only good parts of the avionics was that one of the MX300 radios was good and the Cessna RT359A transponder was working fine after a thorough pitot static system check and certification.

My plan was to quickly replace the audio panel with a new Garmin GMA340 with the built in 4 place intercom. That would take care of the portable intercom and ancient audio panel. Once I had a good look at the rest of the panel, I decided that at the same time the audio panel was replaced, I'd have the Loran and ADF removed. In their place I had my Garmin GPSmap396 wired into the plane with an Airgizmo panel dock.

I met with Tony at Southeast Aero Services to discuss the mods and he suggested that I plan out the next 3 phases for the panel so that when they did the install, they could understand where I wanted to go with this project and minimize the amount of rework on the following steps. They did a great job making the new panel look like it was designed that way.

Over the years I have continued to upgrade the components in the panel. I added instrument lighting so I could see the instruments at night, an engine analyzer so I could better monitor the engine, standby vacuum system for safer IFR flying, and even added an autopilot. For the 2020 mandate I decided that I should replace tha aging Cessna transponder with an ADSB compliant model and as time went on, I've even started to replace some of the components that I upgraded earlier. The GPSMap 396 was replaced with an aera 660 touchscreen GPS and the EDM 700 was upgraded to an easier to use and read EDM 730. During the 2020 COVID pandemic I broke down and decided that it was time that Susie came into the 21st century. I replaced the attitude indicator and directional gyro with dual Garmin G5's, and one of the nav/comms with an IFR GPS/Comm. Now I can do real IFR flying!

I'm Susie's panel will continue to evolve as time goes on.