I haven’t been doing much on the biplane recently, but I did manage to score an altimeter for it. I’ve been watching the for sale ads on line for decent deals. Someone offered an altimeter that worked, but failed an IFR certification due to out of tolerance leakage at 15,000′. Well… if I ever do finish the bipe and fly it, it certainly won’t be at anything over 10K, let alone 15K. So for fifty bucks it was a no-brainer. It’s a pretty nice altimeter, not one of the super cheap imported junkers that’s being sold now. It’s really more altimeter than I need…
So… I have an altimeter, and a quad oil temp / oil pressure / CHT / EGT gauge for monitoring the engine. I will still need an airspeed indicator. Most that I see for sale have speed ranges not appropriate for the Celebrity — I really don’t need or want a 200 knot ASI. Then I’ll need a compass, of course; a slip/skid ball; a tachometer. Whether I need a fuel gauge or not depends on what I decide to do for fuel tanks. I’m thinking no electrical fuel gauges, all float or sight type.
I could just ditch all of it and go with a single instrument from Dynon or Garmin, but I just think such a thing would look out of place in a classic biplane. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the front cockpit, though. It would be nice to at least have airspeed and altitude there for passengers, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to score a deal like this again. There’s always UMA…