Sunfish,
Justification for building your own plane:
I've had several people look at me incredulously when I say I'm building a plane, 'You're actually happy to fly a home made aircraft?'
When you are driving the rivets yourself, you're going to make sure that
all of them are near perfect. A Cessna or Piper can have a certain number of rivets that are not ok, they tend to be driven by minimum wage labourers that do not have a stake in the quality of the finish. I will bet that the rivet finish in my aircraft is far better than any GA aircraft.
Apply this to your avionics research, if you feel you don't have the confidence to put together a panel, get a LAME involved. Better still, join a few forums and soak up all that has been written. (
Welcome to Doug Reeves' Van's Air Force Web Site) The vast majority of experimental aircraft have a far superior avionics setup than most GA aircraft. (I'm not talking Kingairs etc)
You can certainly use the CAO's as a starting point. Use TSO'd instruments if you want?