I'm brand new to blender, but if you're interested in an outlet for your work where it will be greatly appreciated, check out http://www.flightgear.org
Flightgear is an open source flight simulator, and blender is used by many to make models for it. If you check out their wiki, there is a lot of information on modeling for flightgear aircraft. You can have a panel with working instruments on it. The system is highly modular, so you can simply "drop in" instruments, and they work.
Another thing you can do is download an aircraft model, and get an example of a working panel to learn from. Only hangup you'll run into (beside the complexity) is that flightgear models use .ac format files, which Blender doesn't seem to import, so you'll have to convert them, which is pretty simple. Import into AC3D, and export as an .obj file.