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 February 3, 2021

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Panel
April 16, 2004 - 3 hours
Still cutting square holes in the panel. I also got the spots laid out for the round holes so that I can borrow that instrument hole punch from Marshall. Drilled the holes for the switches.

May 11, 2004 - 3.5 hours
Finally started working on the panel. I started by building the map box and cutting the hole in the panel.

May 14, 2004 - 1.5 hours
Spent some time on the map box. The panel hole wasn't quit big enough and needed to be enlarged.

May 15, 2004 - 4 hours
Worked on the structure around the sub panel for the map box and started cutting square holes in the panel for radios.

This is the map box hole with the map box clecoed on.

The sub panel has to be cut and reinforced where the map box passes through.

The first square hole I cut was for the MP3 player.

This is a shot of some of the parts that I have to find a place for in the panel. It's all so very exciting.

The transponder and the comm fit quite nicely.

This is the EIS 4000 Engine monitor.

Another shot of the transponder and comm

The beginnings of how I am going to secure the radio tray in the back.

May 22, 2004 - 0.5 hours
Marshall called and asked if I wanted to fly to Brenham and have lunch. After we flew all over SE Texas looking at airplanes I got a chance to borrow that instrument hole punch and we knocked out the holes for my Dynon, Tru-Trak and my EI fuel gauge. It's hard to believe that is all the round holes that I have but that's it.

May 23, 2004 - 2 hours
I drilled the screw holes for the round instruments with my trusty instrument hole jig. I also laid out where I wanted to put the AOA indicator. Oh and went sailing too.

This jig is used to drill the four mounting holes around either standard sized instrument hole.

I just couldn't resist mounting the D-10, the autopilot and the fuel gauge just to see what they looked like.

May 24, 2004 - 2.1 hours
Cut the hole for the AOA indicator. I also punched the hole for the 25-pin D-sub connector that I may use on the control stick wiring. The more I think about this the less I like the idea though.

At first I thought I would drill a hole in the sub panel for the pitot static lines to pass through and this was how I was going to mark the holes but after I tried the elbows, I decided that they would work well enough, so I never drilled the holes.

This is the Proprietary Software Systems Angle of Attack indicator.

I am thinking of using a 25-pin D-sub for the Inifinity stick grip functions. This is a D-dub punch that I borrowed from work.

The punch makes a perfect hole for a D-sub connector. Now I am thinking I might rather put a terminal strip here instead.

June 5, 2004 - 2 hours
Cut the holes in the panel for the trim indicators

June 6, 2004 - 3 hours
Built another throttle / mixture / prop cable mount for the panel. I also drilled holes in each side of the panel for the parking brake cable (pilot side) and cabin heat cable (wife side).

June 7, 2004 - 1 hours
Cut the holes in the panel for the Matronics trim controls. Also layed out the holes for the intercom.

June 12, 2004 - 2.5 hours
Finished cutting the last of the holes in the panel and riveted the map box on. I put a coat of primer on it all.

The panel has all the holes it's gonna get. Nothing to do now except paint it.

June 13, 2004 - 4 hours
Sanded the panel again and put another coat of primer on it. After that coat set up I wet sanded it and put a coat of black paint on it. I think I'll put one more coat on it and then see how it looks. While paint was drying I mounted the Lightspeed EI module, and started trying to figure out where I am going to run those wires. I also removed the canopy and started taking stuff out of the cabin so that I can get a coat of paint in there.

June 19, 2004 - 2.5 hours
Finished assembling the panel. It's really exciting and now if I only had the cabin painted I could install it and start wiring.

Here is the painted panel and I have started assembling it.

I used a Brother P-Touch 2600 Label Maker to make these labels and used a piece of masking tape to help me keep them straight. The great thing about the 2600 is that it can be connected to a PC and you can do whatever you want with the labels.

Instead of drilling holes in the panel for the anti-rotation rings on the switches I made these little plates. The switches go through the plates and then through the panel. It worked okay but it would have been better if I had thought of this before I drilled the panel. I had to tweak them a little to get the alignment just right.

Here is the left side of the panel. There is a pretty big glare from the flash but you can see what's what.

And here is the wife side of the panel.

The only thing missing at this point is the annunciator and a few labels.

Here is the annunciator that I made. It is basically some LED's behind a photo negative that is behind a piece of tinted plexiglass.

I could not get a good picture of what the annunciator looks like with all the indicators lit up. It does not look like this. First they are crystal clear and second I wouldn't be caught dead with anything orange in my airplane. (Being an Aggie and all). They are LED red. You'll just have to get me to push the test button at a flyin sometime. Trust me it looks really cool. And special thanks to my Aunt Terri for shooting the negative for me.

Lots of room behind my solid state panel. You can see my home grown annunicator with the AOA indicator between it and the Dynon which is the long black cylinder.

July 4, 2004 - 2.5 hours
I took the panel into my mad scientist lab and tried to get everything wired that I could on the bench before taking it outside to mount in the plane.

July 5, 2004 - 0.5 hours
I decided that I wasn't going to be able to get all the wire bundles to look like I want without having the panel in the airplane, so I moved all the tools and the panel out of the mad scientist lab and into the airplane factory. I mounted the panel in the plane with clecos.

The cool factor rises sharply as the panel goes in.

July 6, 2004 - 2.4 hours
Finished up the control cable support bracket that attaches the control cables to the sub panel. Started running wires. I had to punch a few holes and I think I spent more time scratching my head trying to figure out where the wires are going to go than I did running wires.

July 7, 2004 - 1.75 hours
Spent most of the evening soldering really small wires to the back of the intercom.

July 8, 2004 - 3.2 hours
I have to leave to go offshore later today so I decided to piddle around with the plane some. I mounted the GRT manifold pressure transducer to the sub-panel and finally got around to installing the bulkhead fitting and the hose to the manifold pressure port on the engine. I tubed up the line to both the manifold pressure sensor and the Lightspeed electronic ignition. I cut some more holes in the firewall for the electronic ignition cables as well as some other wires.

I took this picture of the Manifold Pressure sensore because the way I'm mounting it this sticker will be covered up and I need those numbers to calibrate it.

Here you can see the hose going from the manifold pressure port on cylinder #3 to the bulkhead fitting.

This is a shot of the Lightspeed Electronic Ignition box and the manifold pressure sensor for the GRT EIS-4000 engine monitor.

July 24, 2004 - 2.5 hours
Started working on mounting the magnetic sensor for the Dynon D-10.

July 25, 2004 - 6.5 hours
Finished mounting the Mag sensor and pulled all the wire to wire it up. Also finished all the power wiring to the Dynon. Finished wiring up the Lightspeed Electronic ignition and the strobe power supply stuff as well.

I made a couple of little U-brackets out of stiffener material. They have to be at an angle because the magnetic sensor needs to be in the same orientation as the EFIS. And the panel is at an 8° tilt from the rest of the plane.

Here you can see the Dynon OAT probe. This will allow the EFIS to display OAT, True Airspeed and Density Altitude. It's back here because the interface requires it to be wired to the magnetic sensor.

Here is the magnetic field sensor for the Dynon EFIS D-10. This thing will tell the Dynon which direction the airplane is pointed. There is a magnetometer (the technical term) inside the D-10 but the word on the street is that this works better.

And here is the final product installed complete with a space age moisture barrier. That would be a zip-lock bag and a ty-wrap.

July 27, 2004 - 1.75 hours
Mounted the brain box for the Proprietary Software Systems AOA indicator. Glued some more of those little stick on wire holders to different places on the panel.

I mounted the AOA box with some left over stringer material.

July 28, 2004 - 0.8 hours
Wired up the master contactor to the switch and turned it on. After checking that all the right voltages were going to all the right busses I checked the pins on the connector for the Dynon and then put a fuse in and turned it on.

It's Alive!!! After checking a few things I put the fuse in for the Dynon D-10 and turned it on. This is too much fun.

July 29, 2004 - 1.2 hours
Wired up the Aux feed to the essential buss. This is the switch that feeds the e-buss if the master buss is down. I also piddleed around with that cabin heat cable again.

July 31, 2004 - 5 hours
Today I built a bracket and hooked up the parking brake cable. I started wiring the AOA indicator. I also hooked up the static an pitot lines to the AOA and the Dynon. While I was in the back of the plane I pulled the rudder cables back through the cabin again.

Here you can see the static and pitot connections to the back of the Dynon. The other fitting is for the Dynon AOA which I am not using.

I made a simple bracket from some angle stock that I had around for the parking brake valve. The small brass 'knob' on the cable is just a stop to keep me from pulling the valve handle over center.

August 1, 2004 - 5.3 hours
Finished enough of the AOA wiring to power it up and see if it works. I still have to hook up the annunciator, flap switch and audio. I uploaded the latest firmware into the Dynon EFIS-D10. It worked flawlessly. I played around with the checklists a little bit. I still have some configuration to do to get it perfect but I think I'll be really happy with this box. I started wiring up the GRT EIS-4000 Engine monitor. I managed to get all of the EGT / CHT's wired as well as power and the manifold pressure sensor.

August 4, 2004 - 1.2 hours
Mounted the fuel pressure and oil pressure senders. Pulled the wires through the firewall for these senders and hooked up all but the grounds. I also hooked up the P-lead wires and pulled them through the firewall.

August 7, 2004 - 2.75 hours
Hooked the P-lead up to the switch in the cockpit. Wired the tach input to this same switch. I also put the OAT sensor for the EIS into the NACA duct on the passenger side and wired it up.

August 8, 2004 - 5 hours
Finished all the wiring on the EIS engine monitor (except the annunciator output) and powered it up. It showed a few temperatures that seemed about right but without any calibrations I really couldn't test much. It does work though. I hooked the power up to the MP3/CD player and I also installed my cargo lights, which are nothing more than those cold cathode tubes that people put inside glass cased computers to fancy them up. I mounted them under the seat-back bulkhead.

August 10, 2004 - 1.9 hours
Built a bracket under the co-pilot seat for the two relays that I will use for the flaps.

August 11, 2004 - 1.8 hours
I thought that I could get the flap wiring finished up tonight but it turned out to be a bigger job than I thought.

August 12, 2004 - 2 hours
Finally finished the flap wiring, and actually moved the flaps. It's fun to see stuff move.

These are the flap relays. The third relay gives me an indication of when the flap motor is turning so that I don't forget when I raise the flaps.

This is a shot of the wiring for the flaps and the cargo lights. The blue box is the inverter for the cold cathode tubes that I am using as cargo lights.

Here is the stick grip wiring. The D-sub on the back of the bulkhead is the machined pin type so it is easy enough to move the functions around.

August 21, 2004 - 2 hours
Finished wiring the Landing / Taxi lights. I also wired up the postition lights. I rigged up a way to test the Wig Wag flashre on the L/T lights and I don't think that I am going to be happy with it. I will probably redo it.

August 23, 2004 - 1 hours
Finished the last of the Lightspeed Electronic Ignition wiring by hooking the coax up to the coils. I then started scratching my head about where to put the headset jacks.

I used right angle Fast-on connectors for the coil wiring since the coils are so close to the baffle. I intend to watch these closely and if they show any sign of wear I'll make a new mount for the coils and move them forward. I think this will work okay because the wires have good support due to the fact that they are 3" out to the side of the coils. I may even put an adel clamp on the baffle to hold it even better.

August 24, 2004 - 1 hours
I think I may use a couple of little platic boxes from Radio Shack to put my headset jacks in. This will give the cables some support and eliminate the need to have the little isolation washers. I plan to mount them to the bottom of the sub panel.

The headset jacks fit nicely in those small ABS plastic experimenter boxes that Radio Shack sells. This will keep the jacks isolated from the metal airframe as well as offer some support for the wires.

August 25, 2004 - 2.2 hours
I drilled the holes in the sub panel for my little headset jack boxes and I finished soldering the wires to the DRE intercom connector.

This was some pretty tedious soldering. It is the connector for the DRE-244e intercom that I bought from E-bay. If you buy it from DRE it comes with a pre-made harness. DRE would have made me one but I decided that the cost was more than I was willing to spend since I am perfectly capable of doing this.

August 26, 2004 - 2.1 hours
Still soldering on the intercom wiring. I managed to get the relay done that I put in for switching com 1 to com 2. (I don't have a com 2 but I think I may expand so I put the relay in just in case.) It is a passive mixing circuit that I got from Garth at DRE. I also started soldering the wires to the headset jacks. When I screwed one up I decided that I had breathed enough lead vapor.

August 27, 2004 - 2 hours
Finished soldering the headset jacks in the little boxes and put the intercom wiring harness into the panel. I started hooking up power running the wires around to where they need to be.

You can see here why I wanted all this to be in a box. It makes it look nicer and it protects this rat's nest.

Here is the finished intercom wiring harness. You can see the two boxes that the headset jacks are in, the RCA plugs for the CD/MP3 player and the 4PDT relay that has the passive mixing and com radio switching circuit soldered to it. If I ever add a com radio to this plane I simply wire the coil of that relay to the panel switch and when the relay has power it's com 2 and otherwise it's com 1.

August 28, 2004 - 3 hours
Finished mounting the headset jack boxes under the panel, connected the CD/MP3 player to the intercom and hooked up the PTT wiring to the pilot side stick grip (co-pilot grip is in the mail). I plugged my headset in and gave them to Shannon to put on, then turned on the MP3 player. When her head started bobbing I knew it was working. Once all that was working well I hooked up the audio output of the AOA to the passive mixer circuit and it worked.

The finished headset jack box. I think I'll be happy with this and if I ever want to move the jack location I can just make some extension cables and plug them in here.

Here is my Pioneer CD/MP3 player that I bought. The pre-amp outputs are hooked up to the music input of the DRE intercom. It sounds AWESOME.

There's not much to look at on the intercom but it sure works good. The blue knobs are of my own choosing. I bought this unit from Ebay and it didn't come with knobs or a wiring harness. I am still searching for knobs that I like.

August 29, 2004 - 7.2 hours
Hooked up the flap switch to the AOA and that completes the AOA wiring. I made a plate for the comm antenna mount and Daryl came by and helped me rivet it to the plane. He also brought another headset so we could test out the intercom some more (I only have one headset). That DRE-244e works as advertised. If it works that well with all the airplane noise I'll be thrilled with it. Once I got the antenna mounted I finished all the rest of the wiring to the ICOM A-200 com radio and turned it on. Nothing :-(. Look at the drawings again, and see the text "jumpers MUST be installed" DOH!! Okay install the jumpers and try again. WHOO HOOO!! I dialed in the CTAF for West Houston and actually heard somebody in the pattern. I pushed the PTT and the TX light came on. It's all very exciting.

The com antenna is mounted just below the co-pilot's seat.

Here is the doubler plate on the inside where the com antenna mounts. Yes I got a little carried away with the rivets but it's been a while I wanted to make sure I hadn't forgot how to rivet.

August 31, 2004 - 1 hours
Tonight I worked on the Electronics International Dual Fuel Level guage. I got the power and the backlight hooked up but I am still debating on where to punch a hole in the side of the airplane for the probe wires to pass through. They can't go through the other holes because the fuel probes are forward of the spar and I ain't drillin' no holes in the spar to pass wires through.

September 8, 2004 - 1.5 hours
I replaced the Push-on/Push-off switches in my stick grip with momentary switches. I wired up the com flip-flop and memory buttons to the stick grip and started assembling the co-pilot stick grip that I bought from Ray Allen Company.

September 9, 2004 - 1.6 hours
I messed around with the little solid state flasher that I have been toying with for the last few weeks. I make a little circuit board with a microcontroller on it to drive a couple of solid state relays to flash the landing / taxi lights. I'm not real happy with the solid state flasher that I bought from B & C that clicks. Where I come from solid state stuff shouldn't click. So I made my own. It's a little bit of overkill to have a microcontroller on it but it gave me some more programming experience and it keeps the part count low on the board.

September 10, 2004 - 2.2 hours
Finished installing the little solid state lamp flasher that I made. It works pretty well. It's ugly as it can be but it works. I also managed to get power run to my autopilot and turned it on to see if it would work. It did.

This is the circuit that I made to flash the lamps. The big black things are solid state relays.

September 12, 2004 - 7.5 hours
I spent most of the day installing the transponder. The Encoder wires were already installed but I put the antenna in and hooked it up and wired power and dimmer control wires to it as well as tightening up the mounting screws. It's good to see it work. I am also trying to share the GPS signal from the GPS-35 that the Tru-Trak autopilot uses so that I can get the automatic ALT / STBY functionality from the GTX-327. We'll see if that works. I had to take the panel trim switches apart and re-wire them so that they would work with my trim set-up and I installed the rear mounting screws for the comm radio. I had left them off because they were a pain and I didn't know whether I would need to take that tray out while messing with the transponder.

I put the transponder antenna on the right side of the plane right behind the firewall

Here is the antenna connector for the transponder.

The antenna connector mounts to the transponder backing plate like so.

Well it lights up. It's all so very exciting.

September 13, 2004 - 0.5 hours
Didn't feel like doing much on the project tonight, but I did remember to borrow the little 4-40 tap from work so I went ahead and put the stick grip on the right stick.

The right side control stick complette with the Ray Allen stick grip.

October 10, 2004 - 1 hours
I forgot to hook up the ground on the OAT probe for the Dynon D-10 so I cut that stuff loose and re-wired it.

December 7, 2004 - 2 hours
Tonight I messed with all the dimmer circuits and panel lights in the panel. I am going to set my plane up to simply dim the entire panel to a preset level when the position lights are turned on. I'm having to experiment to find the right voltage for each instrument.

December 12, 2004 - 3.5 hours
I managed to get the annunciator re-mounted. It was only temporary last time. I got power to it and started hooking up warning circuits. I think it'll work well.

February 7, 2005 - 0.4 hours
Borrowed the 9-pin D-sub punch from work and put another 9-pin connector on my map box. It'll be for my Garmin GPSMap 296 that I plan to mount on my panel. I want to be able to get the NMEA information out of it while flying.

February 13, 2005 - 4 hours
Installed my Garmin GPSMap 296. I bought a marine mount to steal the plastic clip from, and installed it on the panel, right below my Dynon. I intend to mount th antenna that came with it up on the glare shield. I also bought the power / data cable for it so that I could break out the serial port for some data logging.

I used a marine mount for the GPS and stole the plastic clip from it and mounted it to the panel.

This is a better picture of the GPS mounting. The extra hole is for the antenna wire that will have to wait for the top skin.

I put a little piece of plastic tubing over the transponder antenna wire to keep it from chafing against the cabin heat conrol cable.

February 19, 2005 - 2.5 hours
I decided that I didn't want to have to run the autopilot wires from the wings all the way to the autopilot once the wings were on, so I ran all the wires necessary from the back of the autopilot to floor under the passenger seat, and I'll put a splice there for the autopilot. This will let me get the fuel pump installed and all the covers over the center floor panel without having to worry about how to run those wires all the way up to the panel.

March 21, 2005 - 1 hours
Finished wiring up the GPS antennas.

Disclaimer:
This web site and the infomation contained within it are for entertainment purposes only. The opinions expressed on construction techniques are my opinions only and should not be confused with proper construction techniques. There is undoubtedly more than one way to build an airplane and some methods that I use may or may not work in any given circumstance. If there is any question please call the kit manufacturer. I love to help but I am not responsible for the misuse of any information contained on this web site.

 February 3, 2021
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