What's new | Hangar Flying
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What's new

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

24 Sep 2026

A new construction line shows straight away

Adding a construction line now shows the lines. Construction lines are hidden when a design opens, and until now Add Horizontal or Add Vertical added a line you could not see until you pressed the eye. Adding one now turns the lines on, so the new line appears in the middle of the panel ready to drag.

24 Sep 2026

A span placard across a row of switches

One placard bracket for a whole row. Select a row of switches (click the first, then Shift-click the others) and click Placard, then type the words, such as OFF. The span placard is centered under the row with a solid line from the first switch to the last, broken around the words, each end turned up toward the switches, the way a cut and engraved panel is marked.

  • It stays with its row. Move, align or space the switches and the span placard fits itself to them again. Delete a switch and it spans the ones left.
  • Above or below, and ends where you want them. Double-click it to put it above the row (CABIN HEAT over a row of knobs) or below it, to set the height of its bracket (the turned-up ends: none, 1/16, 1/8 or 1/4 inch, or any other), and to end the line at the first and last switch's centers or just past the row's outer edges. Every other placard setting works on it too: font, letter height, colors, border and justify.
  • Down a column. Select switches one above another and the span placard runs down the column, to its right.
  • Span placards are saved with the design and appear in every picture of the panel. See Placards in the Help.

24 Sep 2026

Click to add an instrument, and Undo from the keyboard

Instruments are now added by clicking, not by dragging. Click one in the search results and a card opens with its manufacturer, model, part number, size, weight and notes. Press Add, and the instrument follows your pointer at its true size; click on the panel where you want it, and it goes down centered right there. Hold Shift to put down several, and press Esc when you are done. It works at any zoom, and on a tablet it is three taps: the instrument, Add, and the spot on the panel.

Double-click an instrument to add one straight away. It goes a quarter inch to the right of the last one you added, level with it, so four double-clicks on a toggle switch give you a row of four.

Add several is on the card now (subscribers). Press Add several…, enter the rows, how many per row and the gaps between them in inches, and the card tells you how many that makes and how big the block will be. Press Place and click where the middle of the block should go. The block comes in as one group, and one Undo takes it off again. The card remembers your numbers for the next block.

Undo and Redo have keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+Z undoes; Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y redoes. On a Mac, Command+Z and Command+Shift+Z. They leave the search box and other text boxes alone while you are typing in them.

Dragging an instrument in from the list is switched off, because on some screens it scrolled the panel away while you worked. Instruments already on the panel still move by dragging, as before.

24 Sep 2026

Space instruments evenly with Distribute

The tool row has three new buttons beside Align for spacing instruments evenly.

  • Distribute Horizontally and Distribute Vertically: select three or more instruments. The two at the ends stay where they are and the ones between move so the gaps between them are all the same.
  • Distribute Across a Total: select two or more, enter a total width or height in inches, and they are spread evenly so the row measures exactly that, starting from the first one. Handy for a row of switches that has to fit a given space.

A group moves as one piece, a locked instrument stays put, and Undo puts everything back in one step. See Align instruments in Help. Premium.

Thank you to the builder who asked for this with Feature request. Keep them coming.

24 Sep 2026

Instruments no longer get stuck moving one way

Dragging an instrument now moves it freely unless you are holding Shift. Holding Shift while dragging keeps an instrument moving only across or only up and down, which is what it is for. But if Shift was let go while another window had the keyboard, for example after taking a screenshot on a Mac with Command+Shift+4, the designer did not notice, and every drag after that moved one way only until Shift was pressed again. The designer now checks Shift as you drag, so that no longer happens.

24 Sep 2026

New icons in the tool row

The tools have a new, matching set of icons. Every tool is where it was and does what it did; the icons are now drawn in one clean line style, and each shows what the tool does: the Align buttons show the edge or center they line up to, and the four stacking buttons show layers moving back and forward. Point at any icon to see its name.

Snap-To's on and off switch works again. Clicking the magnet had stopped turning snapping off. It now does, and a red slash across the magnet shows it is off. While it is off, instruments you add in the meantime do not snap either.

On a narrower screen, Feature request and Report a problem show just the lightbulb and the bug, so they are no longer cut off at the right edge.

24 Sep 2026

Placards in the Panel Designer

Subscribers can now put placards on the panel. Select a switch, a breaker or any instrument and click Placard, the tag in the tool row, then type the words: BOOST PUMP, AVIONICS MASTER, PITOT HEAT. The placard sits just below the instrument, drawn to scale, and moves with it.

  • Placards of their own. With nothing selected, Placard places one that is not attached to anything, such as the passenger warning. Press Shift+Enter to start a new line. Stand alone unhooks a placard from its instrument.
  • Font, colors, border and size. Five fonts, the text color, a background color, a square or rounded border, and a box size of your own, in inches, with the words wrapping inside it. Justify left, center or right. Every new placard starts with the standard look; select several to change them together.
  • Change several at once. Select several placards and click Placard: the font, size, colors and border you choose are set on all of them.
  • Any side, at the distance you choose. Double-click a placard to put it above, below, left or right of its instrument, set its distance from the instrument, and pick a letter height from 3/32 inch up to 1 inch, or type any height up to 3 inches for a registration number. Or drag it where you want it; it stays with its instrument.
  • The other tools work on placards. Align, center, move and space, the arrow keys, group, lock, arrange, delete, undo and redo work on placards on their own or together with instruments.
  • At the edge of the panel a placard can hang past the edge, as an instrument can. The part past the edge is not in pictures of the panel. The canvas now scrolls past the top and left edges too, so you can see and drag anything that hangs there.
  • Placards are saved with the design and appear in the pictures of the panel: the ones you export, and the one sent with a CAD, Cut, Paint & Label request. A copy of a design does not have its placards yet. See Placards in the Help.
  • Small instruments drawn to size. A design now opens with switches, breakers and other small instruments drawn at their exact size, on the canvas and in every picture of the panel. Before, one could be drawn slightly off its size until you zoomed.

24 Sep 2026

Positions are measured from the center of the panel

The X / Y readout now measures from the center of the panel template. X is positive to the right of center and negative to the left; Y is positive above center and negative below. Click an instrument and Instrument center gives its center the same way, so an instrument reading X 0.00, Y 0.00 sits dead center on the panel, and two instruments with X 3.25 and X -3.25 are exactly symmetric.

Both readouts also hold at any zoom now, and Instrument center no longer reads short on panels with extra space above the template.

24 Sep 2026

Quantities on the Equipment List

The Equipment List now has a Qty column. Identical instruments on the panel are one line with their count, so six toggle switches read as one line with a Qty of 6. The downloaded PDF carries the same column.

Equipment you add with Add equipment has a quantity too. It starts at 1; type the number you need, from 1 to 999.

Our shop now sees how many of each on a CAD, Cut, Paint & Label request.

24 Sep 2026

Click selects one; Shift-click selects several

Selecting works the way most drawing programs do now. A click on an instrument or a placard selects just that one, so picking a different instrument no longer means clearing the selection first. To select several, hold Shift (or Ctrl, or Command on a Mac) and click each one; Shift-clicking one that is already selected takes it out. Clicking an empty part of the panel still clears the selection.

The selection stays after a tool. Align, Distribute, Move / Space, Arrange, Group, Ungroup and Lock leave what you selected still selected, so you can use one tool after another on the same instruments. Delete, Undo and Redo clear it, and Placard selects the new placard.

Every keyboard shortcut is now in one Help article, Keyboard shortcuts: selecting, nudging, deleting, undoing, zooming and jumping to the search.

24 Sep 2026

Smaller fixes across the designer and the site

Zooming in no longer covers the information box. From about 120% the panel used to draw over the Design, Aircraft and selected-instrument details on the right. The panel now scrolls under the box's edge, and the box stays in view at every zoom.

Lock and Unlock keep your selection, so you can press one straight after the other.

No more pop-up boxes from the tool row. If a tool needs an instrument selected first, a short note at the right of the tool row says so and fades by itself.

The information box shows a dash for what is not known, instead of "None", and leaves out the cost when there is no price. The Equipment List no longer shows "None" as a description either.

The Help button no longer sits over the last search result in the designer.

The Help page lists its articles as links and has its own search box. The Help articles no longer carry the old videos; new pictures are on the way.

On a phone, the cookie notice is one line.

hangarflying.com/paneldesigner now opens My designs, and /pricing opens your subscription page, instead of "Page not found".

My designs is now a grid of cards. Each design shows its picture, name, aircraft, last-saved day and equipment MSRP, with its buttons as icons along the foot of the card: a pencil to rename, stacked pages to copy, a picture with an arrow to download, a chain link to copy the link, and a trash can to delete. Click anywhere else on a card to open the design. A Sort by list sits beside the search box.

24 Sep 2026

A Panel Designer fix when the canvas scrolls

Moving several instruments at once works again when the canvas is scrolled. If you had zoomed or scrolled the canvas, then selected a few instruments and dragged them, only the one under your pointer went where you put it. The rest jumped away, often far down the panel. They now all move together, the same distance.

Drag an instrument to the edge of the canvas and hold it there, and the canvas still scrolls to make room, as before.

Thank you to the builder who reported it. If you see anything like this again, press Report a problem in the designer; it sends us a picture of your canvas with it.

24 Sep 2026

Your uploads as cards, and tidier pages on a phone

Panel templates and Instruments, the pages that list what you have uploaded, are now cards, like My designs. Each card shows the picture, the name, and whether it is In the library or Waiting for our review, with a pencil to change it and a trash can to delete it. Search and Sort by sit above the cards, and the long block of old instructions is now a short list of what the picture needs.

Compare two designs fits a phone: the two pickers stack one above the other.

The Equipment List on a phone shows each item as its own card, so the description is no longer cut off.

Contact us has a plain Send message button, and Page not found now offers the way back: Home, My designs and Help.

21 Sep 2026

One mark, on every page and every tab

The Hangar Flying mark is now the same everywhere on the site. Until today the designer wore a blue version of it, and the mark changed again depending on whether your screen was set light or dark. There is one version now — the main Hangar Flying mark, with its red-orange pointer — in the header of every page.

The icons went with it: the small one in your browser tab and your bookmarks, and the larger one used when you keep the site on a phone or tablet home screen. The same mark is at the top of the emails we send you now, and on the quote sheet that goes out when you ask for avionics pricing.

If your tab still shows the old icon, reload the page. Browsers hold on to these for a while, and a reload is all it takes.

Nothing has moved and nothing works differently.

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.