What's new | Hangar Flying
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What's new

What changed on the site and in the Panel Designer, newest first.

20 Sep 2026

Start designing straight away, and confirmation links now last a week

You can use the designer as soon as you create an account. You no longer have to find the confirmation email before you can start. You have seven days to confirm your address, and a reminder sits at the top of the page until you do. Your designs are kept either way.

  • Confirmation links now last seven days. They used to expire after one hour, so if you signed up in the evening and opened your email the next morning, the link had already stopped working — and the page said nothing useful. That was our fault, and it is fixed.
  • A link works whoever is signed in. If you have more than one email address, or you read your email on a device signed in to a different account, the link used to be refused. It now confirms the address and tells you plainly which one it confirmed.
  • An expired link now explains itself and offers to send you a new one, instead of showing an error page.

If you have been waiting on a confirmation email that never worked, press Send the link again on the reminder at the top of the page, or on the Check your email page.

20 Sep 2026

Ask for a feature from inside the Panel Designer

The Panel Designer's menu bar has a new Feature request button, beside Report a problem. Tell us what you would like added or changed, and what you are trying to get done. A picture of your canvas and the design's details go with it, so we can see what you mean.

  • We read every request, and reply to the email address on your account.
  • Report a problem works as before: use it when something goes wrong.

20 Sep 2026

The old Builder's log is retired; a new one is planned

The Builder's log pages on hangarflying.com are retired. They had not been in use for some time. Their addresses now lead to the home page, and the old e-News issues lead here, to What's new.

  • Nothing you wrote was deleted. Every project and entry is kept, and will be carried into the new Builders Log.
  • A new, fully featured Builders Log is planned as part of Hangar Flying, alongside the Panel Designer. We will announce it here.

19 Sep 2026

The design's name and MSRP are in the information box

In the Panel Designer, the information box at the right of the canvas now leads with a Design section: the design's name and the running MSRP of the instruments on the panel. They moved there from the right end of the menu bar, so everything about the design reads in one place: the design, then the aircraft and template, then the selected instrument.

  • Nothing about the figure changed. It is the same running total, in whole dollars.
  • More design figures will be added to this section as the equipment data grows.

19 Sep 2026

Designs on our Facebook page open on their aircraft's page

A design we post on the Hangar Flying page on Facebook now opens on this site, on that aircraft's page, with the design shown at full size at the top.

  • From there, Create an account, or signed in on a computer, Start a panel layout on this template: the New panel design page opens with that design's template selected.
  • The rest of the page is the aircraft's own: every panel template for it, the newest designs, and the equipment builders install most often.
  • A posted design is labeled with the aircraft's manufacturer and model only. Your name and the design's name are never shown, as on Featured designs. See Terms and Privacy.

18 Sep 2026

Panel templates by aircraft, and a one-click start

Every aircraft has its own page. Panel templates lists the aircraft in the template library by manufacturer. An aircraft's page shows every panel template for it, how many panels have been laid out on them, the newest exported designs, and the equipment builders install most often.

  • All the templates for the aircraft are on one page, whoever drew them: the aircraft manufacturer's, Aerosport Products' carbon fiber panels, and the Hangar Flying modular panels. Each card names the template's manufacturer and what sets it apart, with its dimensions in inches.
  • Start a panel layout from the template's card. Signed in on a computer, click a template and the New panel design page opens with that template selected at the top of the list. Enter a design name and open the designer.
  • A Van's RV and its A model share one page. The RV-8 and the RV-8A have the same panel, so their templates are together on the RV-8 page. The same holds for any RV with an A model.
  • An aircraft page appears once 10 panels have been laid out on the aircraft's templates.

Featured designs

  • Each design is labeled with the aircraft's manufacturer and model. → See more beside it opens that aircraft's page. Click the picture for the large view.
  • A design laid out on a member-uploaded template shows the aircraft's manufacturer where the site can determine it, otherwise the model alone.

On your phone

  • The home page is now the same page a computer shows, in one column: featured panels, panel templates by aircraft, CAD, Cut, Paint & Label, and the Wire Size Calculator.

Throughout the site

  • The blue outline no longer appears around a link or button after a mouse click. It still appears when you move through a page with the Tab key.

18 Sep 2026

The subscription page, phones, Featured designs, and no more Google tracking

My Account → Subscriptions has been rebuilt for subscribers: your subscription with its renewal date, your card, your billing address and your invoices, each in its own card with one button.

  • Remove your card whenever you like. If it is your only card, renewal turns off with it and your subscription stays until the end of the year you paid for. The page tells you the date before you confirm.
  • Turn off renewal, or turn it back on, with one button.
  • Invoices have plain View and Download buttons.

On your phone

  • The site has a short menu made for phones, and every page fits a phone in one column.
  • My designs shows each design's picture and name. Tap one to open, save or share the picture.
  • The Panel Designer itself needs a computer, or a tablet held sideways (an iPad mini in landscape or wider). On anything narrower it says so.

In the Panel Designer

  • A design needs at least 3 instruments before it can be exported, shared, listed as equipment or sent to our shop. With fewer, the designer says so.
  • A new design starts with an inch of room above and below the panel. Change it, or turn it off, when you create the design.
  • My designs on a computer has larger pictures, prices in whole dollars, and a heading over every column.

CAD, Cut, Paint & Label

  • A new page describes the service, with 25 photographs of finished panels you can page through and zoom to full detail: CAD, Cut, Paint & Label. It is under Panel Designer in the menu.

Featured designs

  • The home page and the Featured designs page show one picture per person per aircraft, the newest, and no bare templates.

Privacy

  • Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are gone. The site counts its own visits, without cookies and without keeping internet addresses.
  • We no longer keep an internet address with sponsor-ad views or short-link visits, and the thumbnail the designer makes as you work opens only for you.
  • The Terms and the Privacy notice are now one page, rewritten in plain language to say what the site does today: how subscriptions renew and end, that exported pictures are public, how we use what is created here (never with your name attached), and what we collect and who receives it.

17 Sep 2026

A new look, and a sharper designer

Every page of hangarflying.com has a new look: one clean layout, plain wording, and the same headings and cards everywhere. Your designs, your account and your subscription are exactly as they were.

In the Panel Designer

  • Zoom and scroll. Zoom from 50% to 400% with the buttons beside the tools or Ctrl/Cmd and the mouse wheel, and scroll the canvas for fine placement. The template and every instrument stay locked together at any zoom, and when you resize your browser window. Premium.
  • Snapping that follows the panel. Instruments snap to the template's edges, to other instruments, and to construction lines at their edges and center. There is no grid anymore. Premium.
  • Construction lines. Hidden until you show them; new lines start at the center of the panel; a line takes the pointer from a few pixels either side; click anywhere to deselect; Delete removes them. Premium.
  • Undo and redo, fixed. Undo now brings back exactly what was there, whatever you searched for or zoomed to in between. Premium.
  • Keyboard. Delete removes the selection. Arrow keys nudge the selected instruments a hundredth of an inch, a tenth with Shift. Premium for the arrow keys.
  • Instrument center readout replaces the cursor readout when an instrument is selected.
  • One-row instrument search at the bottom, with a wider search box and taller results.
  • Export, equipment list and CAD request open at once, save your design first, and the picture export always comes out the same size.

Help and problems

  • The Help button at the bottom right of every page searches every help article and answers questions. Every article has been rewritten for the new designer.
  • Report a problem: the bug icon at the right end of the designer's tool row. Tell us what happened; a picture of your canvas and the details we need come with it, and we reply by email.

Panel fabrication

  • CAD, Cut, Paint & Label in the designer's menu bar sends a finished design to our shop to be drawn in CAD, cut, painted and labeled. Our shop prices it; you accept, ask for changes or decline on your own request page.