Brief Description: First Trial Fit Of Instruments - Part 1
he moment has finally arrived! Time to trial fit all of the avionics into the mounted instrument panel! This was truly an exciting event. The best news is that everything fit perfectly! I mean PERFECTLY! The long Garmin SL-30 rests nicely on the rear support, and the very heavy Kenwood DNX8120 rests nicely on the cross support. I really wish I could say that I totally planned both of those events, but frankly it was mostly just luck. I did swap the location of the Garmin GTX-327 and the Garmin SL-30 on the recommendation of the guy from ePanelBuilder as he said that he thought I was going to have an issue with the back support because the SL-30 is so long. Boy was he right! Swapping the two put the SL-30 on top and as it turns out, it fits perfectly now!
Overall I am pleased as punch with the layout and fit of all the instruments. I am particularly happy with the "balance" of the whole panel. Best of all, it hardly even looks like an airplane instrument panel! Almost solid LCD screens! It should be quite a light show when I fire those babies up!
Next up is the fabrication of the radio mounts behind the panel. They should go pretty quickly I'm hoping. Once those are done, I'll make a few modifications to the instrument panel CAD drawing, then email the new version up to the CNC guy to cut the real metal panel!
