ālea iacta est ("the die has been cast")

The idiom "Crossing the Rubicon" means to pass a point of no return, and refers to Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 BC without disbanding his Legion, which was considered an act of war. According to historian Suetonius, Caesar uttered the famous phrase ālea iacta est ("the die has been cast").

I then started to figure out how to interface more hardware to the thing. I had a Desktop Aviator Model 1010E which I was using as an electrical panel (see below). I figured it would be easy to tear it's guts out and interface the switches into the new panel! The mechanical part was easy, and just required drilling holes in the panel and screwing the switches in. The soldering turned out to be a much bigger chore. The factory wires need to be extended to make the thing work, and all of them were thin as a Frog Hair. It is also possible to melt plastic switch housings with a soldering iron. After a great amount of frustration, and teaching my kids new swear words, I got everything soldered and interfaced into the panel, and everything programmed through FSUIPC. I could now flip switches and stuff happened! My wife, children and dogs were unimpressed, but I felt like Orville and Wilbur at Kitty Hawk!

I got a little cocky and changed the Master switch to a Cessna factory split switch that I found at aircraftspruce.com . I also bought a toggle switch the same size as the others at Radio Shack and split out the Beacon and Strobe light functions onto discrete switches.