Tonight I had the opportunity to host a fellow Zenith 650 builder in my shop. Because of a recent posting on the Matronics list, an Irvine builder figured out that there was a kindred spirit within 10 minutes of his house. Brad Rawls came by and gave my project a thorough going over. As it turns out, he is building almost the identical configuration in every major respect. Since this was his first time to see the 601/650 in person, he really spent time soaking it in. He even logged some cockpit time, checking out the fit of the airplane. I really enjoyed seeing his enthusiasm for his project. He also brings a whole host of skills to homebuilding, including a fair amount of time building high-performance cars. You can bet I'll be asking for his help when it is time to run my brake lines! I wrapped up the night by cutting the mounting hole for my Extreme EFIS. It is meant as a standard round instrument replacement, thus the round mounting hole. As you can see on the drawing, it is also offset to the left bottom of the Extreme. Now my great hope is that the dimensions, and my take off from the drawing, were correct. I'll know when the unit arrives in a week or so.
2.99" (76mm) mounting hole
The installation drawing showing the offset of the mounting hole
