My panel is designed so that all main access instruments are on the left to be operated with my throttle hand which left quite a bit of space on the right side of the panel. I wanted to have somewhere for a small bottle of water and to carry my spare pair of spectacles.
The Van's map box was the obvious choice but it's length restricted where it could go and I didn't want to compromise the rest of the panel. So I looked at the average length of a 300 ml bottle of water and decided to reduce the length of the box by about 3 inches.
One added little bonus was that when I saw the peices I had cut off I immediately saw a shelf so the map box will have my water in the bottom and specs on the top (see next log for photo).
I trimmed off the bottom flange of the map box so that the top flange would just clear the Altimeter mounting ring. The box rests on the aft cross brace with some anti-chafe strip seperating the two.
The door will eventually have some 3M Dual Lock fitted to attach things like mobile phone (back up GPS Nav)/ Aerobatic Sequence Card etc. Continued/
