Brief Description: 1: Front Deck and Instrument Panel
Spent a big day today working on the cockpit forward deck. Match drilling the top skin was quite a task as some of the holes would not line up without a lot of effort. There's a couple holes at the left front that I could not get to match, so I'll make up a small backing piece to add some extra strength to what would otherwise be a poorly installed rivet.
Match drilling the skin to the stainless steel firewall flange was also slow going. I used a nice new drill bit, plenty of Boelube, and slow rpm. A reasonable force is required when drilling stainless, so I also placed a cleco clamp either side of each hole when drilling to help prevent the stainless flange from bending.
There are a number of small angle brackets to be made and fitted as part of installing the instrument panel. The instructions are lacking any detail whatsoever as to how to assemble these, so there's some thinking to be done to get them properly aligned. I can only post three pictures per entry here, so will put photo's on the next post.
Another madatory job done today was sticking a paper mock-up of my avionics ontot he blank panel. I love how it looks. After pondering it for a while I can see a couple minor changes are in order, but I'm sure that will happen a lot between now and the day that I finish. All part of the fun of building, hey.
Matchdrilling the forward skin to the stainless steel firewall flange - slow going
Obligatory photo of my panel mock-up. Twin Dynon Skyview with standalone Gemini PFD for redundancy
