Test Fit New Avionics

I cut the holes for the new avionics boxes and test fit them into the holes.  Cutting these holes in place was a real pain.  The nibbler I had wouldn’t cut 0.063″ thick sheet, and I didn’t have anything else that would work well.  I ended up drilling a series of 1/4″ holes around the perimeter and using a file to open the hole up enough for the avionics to fit.  It was quite a bit of iteration and it ended up taking me nearly 2 hours to get them cut.  That was still way faster than pulling the panel out of the plane though.  With everything installed and aligned, I drilled the mounting holes through the holes in the face of the avionics.

Afterward, I pulled the new boxes and the GTN, then used a scrap miniature #6 nutplate to drill holes for the rivets that will hold the nutplates in place.  I still need to countersink the holes and rivet them in place, but I’m beat tonight.  It shouldn’t take more than a couple more hours to finish up the nutplates and then fabricate a few new network cables to tie the boxes together.  The autopilot control box (on the right in the picture above) also includes a trim controller that essentially does the same function as the VP-X that controls the trim now.  In the future though, Dynon plans to add auto-trim to their autopilot, so I’ll eventually rewire the trim to go through this box.

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