Hello everyone, I just finished my project and thought I would do a write-up to share my experience.

First off, this website and forum community was such an amazing help. There is no way I would have been able to do this project without the guidance found here, especially regarding the Pi and wiring. Mark and Bill you guys are awesome!

I started gathering the materials and components about 3 weeks ago. The hardest part to get was the MDF board, and I ended up having to buy a 4'x8' sheet since thats all that was available at my local Menards and Lowes. The sectional I used is the Minnesota Aeronautical Chart, which I had mailed to me by the Minnesota Office of Aeronautics. I originally planned to use a Pi Zero for the project, but user ZeroEngineLand on the forum pointed out that not all of the Pi Zeros have headers already soldered on the board (such as the one I was planning to buy), so I ended up getting the Pi 4 with a header instead. I got the frame from pictureframes.com, and it was by far the most expensive component of the project since it had to be custom made to fit the chart's strange dimensions (25 1/2" by 31 3/8"). With shipping it was around $150.

I used Foreflight to map out my airports, and then cross-checked with aviationweather.gov to make sure all of them actually did report weather. I did find a couple airports that didn't report so Im glad I checked it twice. The final selection of airports ended up being slightly different from the Foreflight picture.

Once I had all the components the first thing I did was test all the electronics. I had one small hiccup with the software which Mark helped me fix quickly. The only other problem I ran into was a faulty data or ground connection to the lights causing random flashing, as I learned from another post on the forum. I moved some connections on the breadboard and everything worked great after that.

Since I had so much MDF leftover I did a practice run with an old VFR sectional to see how the spray adhesive worked. I was very happy with how easy it was to get a good bond and get bubbles out. I also drilled some practice holes to see how the lights would fit. As someone on the forum already mentioned, the Rextin LEDs that are linked under the Basic instructions have a hard plastic shell instead of the soft rubber, so I wasn't able to reduce the size of the lights like the instructions said. This required me to increase the hole size from 3/8" to 1/2", and the lights fit snuggly. Since the grommets were 3/8" size they were loose however, so I used hot glue to secure them in the holes.

Once I had the actual chart clued onto the board and all the holes drilled I glued on my grommets. One thing to note with the MDF board, it has a tendency to blow out the back side if you drill all the way through from one end, so eventually I switched to drilling from the front until the tip of the bit poked through the back, then drilling back through from the rear. If I could go back in time I would have put the lights in before the grommets, since when I did put the lights in I accidentally popped some of the grommets out and slightly damaged the chart in a couple spots. I used super glue to reattach the grommets that came out. I used hot glue to secure the lights from the back. 

I made the legend in Microsoft Word which took a couple tries to get the spacing and size correct. For the final one I printed it on thick resume paper since regular printer paper let some of the words on the sectional bleed through. I used the spray adhesive again to fix it to the board.

For securing the electrical components to the board I used a combination of materials. The breadboard has its own adhesive backing, but for the Pi and the power supplies I used Gorilla adhseive strips. Then to keep the power chords in place I used Gorilla Tape, which isn't the prettiest but seems to be holding nicely so far. 

Finally I drilled three holes in the frame for the power chord, buttons, and light sensor. Right now the buttons and sensor are just held on with electrical tape while I figure out exactly where they will go.

Overall this was an extremely fun project and I am very happy with how it turned out. Once again thank you so much to this community for all the help!

- Nathan