I installed the instrument panel in the airplane this afternoon. This was more of an ordeal than I thought because I intentionally left the angles long that attach the panel to the radio stack. I had to remove them and cut them back so that they wouldn’t interfere with the annunciator lights and switches at the bottom of the panel.
First up is to wire the master contactor. I used some 20AWG black wire (since this will go to ground potential when the master switch is closed) and ran this back to the panel. I ran this through the right firewall penetration since that’s where I’m running all of my non-sensor wires, and this will carry a non-trivial amount of power.
This goes to the master switch and the other wire here goes back to the firewall ground block. Most of the other switches on the panel will be grounded locally since they’re just sense wires for the VP-X, but like I said, this will carry a non-trivial amount of power so it goes back to the firewall.
With the battery hooked back up, throwing the master switch makes a nice satisfying clunk. I confirmed voltage at the VP-X was correct and shut everything back off. My goal is to get the VP-X providing power to all of the avionics within the next week.
