Panel
Given that IFR is definitely in my plane's future, I have been told that some sort of wing leveler/autopilot is a necessity. I was fortunate enough to get a deal on a used Navaid on Ebay. It came out of a Glastar with 285 hours, so it should still have plenty of life left. To test it out, I hooked it up to my car battery. I put the unit in Wing Leveler mode, and rotated the head unit about to verify it solicited the correct servo response. Everything checked out good!
Below is a mockup of what I would like my panel to look like. The GNS430 may get chucked in place of something cheaper, but I still have quite a bit of time to look into it. I think this will give me an IFR panel with some redundancy at an affordable price (in airplane world). The LCD/DVD is obviously just a nice to have...we'll have to wait and see.
