Lindy
3/21/2009
After spending the morning at the airport, then cleaning house all afternoon, I finally was able to get out to the garage for a little bit tonight...What I thought was going to take 15 minutes-clecoing the panel in place-took two hours!! I had to make more mods to the panel ribs since the comm and xponder tray are now in place.
First, I knew I was going to have to make a hole for the transponder harness plug to go thru the sub-panel, so I marked that, drilled the corners, and cut the square out.
Now that the plug can go thru the panel, it slides right in...right??? Nope. The screws for the trays were interfering with the panel ribs...and the modifying began. I think the panel was fit five or six times before I got to this point...
Here's a couple of detail shots of the mods I made...pretty rough at this point, but I'll clean 'em up. I also had to remove the nut plates to make the cuts, so I'll have to use a nut on the screw on the left side, and a single lug nut plate on the right.
The screws in this tray are way too long, and will be replaced later on.
So after two hours, the panel was back in. I need to locate the holes for the air vents and mic jacks, then I'll probably take it back off to paint or powdercoat it.
Moving on to what I intended to spend the majority of my time on tonight, the fuse block hinged plate. All I got done was drilling the hinge to the sub-panel.
I got a call from Will James tonight telling me my cowling is the next in line after he finishes a commercial order. Should be here by the first week of May or so, which should work out perfectly! Time to send the second to last "big" check...the prop is all that's left!
2.5 hours