It's been almost exactly one year since I pulled the instrument panel and yesterday I set the new one back in place. Still working in a 43 degree hangar, but with the halogen lights, I actually feel like I might be getting a sun burn.
I recorded a couple of weights before it went in. The .050" aluminum panel, switches, wire, and brackets comes in at 7 pounds. Adding the Dynon, the hand held GPS, transponder, and com radios brought it up to 15 pounds.
Like I said, I have better than a hundred wires in this set-up. It's relatively easy to work behind the panel area, before it's installed, but becomes much more limited now that it's in place. This was so much easier 22 years ago.
I'll sit on my haunches for quite a few minutes at a time and when I have to get out of the plane to get something, it takes a while to unfold myself. Toward the end of the exercise, as I was crawling over the side rail, I got a sudden damned charlie horse. Ouch!
After a few adjustments, I stuck the panel in place and started hooking up some wires. Each wire is tagged with a number; Axx - general airframe, Exx - EC3 Engine Control Unit related, and Dxx - part of the Dynon D180 FlightDEK. Everything is pretty well identified on my drawings and, in theory, it's just a matter of crimping on a terminal and sticking it on the proper switch.
About two hours into it I did find I had forgotten to run a critical wire - the wire that feeds +12V to the ignition coils. Rats. Well, it won't be bad to run the new one.
I keep imagining the fun I'll have as I actually apply power and start flipping a few switches. With a little luck, things will operate and I won't let the smoke out of the wires.
No photos today.
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