New panel fit/layout, seat foam | 1.18.2021 - 1.19.2020

Our new panel arrived from Velocity! Older kits had been supplied with a "canted" panel, that angled the radio stack towards the pilot. With newer electronic instruments, a more typical panel is completely flat; especially for what we are going to do with it.

Here's the new, untouched panel. Rather freshly laid up too; pretty sure they made this to order.

Since there are a bunch of tasks hinging on getting this thing fit and the throttle corner cut out, I set to work on fitting this to the plane. This comes pretty oversized, so it needs to be cut down, particularly in height. It would be sweet to keep the height as-is to have more (much needed) panel real-estate, but you'd have terrible forward visibility.

Since I liked (and had already verified everything fit within) the way the Stabells had cut the previous panel, I traced the rough outline of that panel onto this one, then cut around it, leaving more material to fine tune things after.

After a *bunch* of fine tuning (not kidding this took like 2 hours, and that was using an outline already), I finally had the panel fit to the plane. To be fair, I went slow since you only really get one shot at this. You can always make it smaller, you can't really make it bigger (easily). Measure 10 times, cut once.

I then set to laying out the instrument holes on the panel, starting from a plumb (and centered) and level set of lines across the panel.

Here's some of the layout marks, you can also see how much smaller the panel is.

#1 tip for other builders: have a nice workbench. #2 tip for builders: have a space large enough to have a workbench. I'm young, my back will be fine I guess.

Emily and I also test fit some of the mockup seat foam that she's been working on. We discovered that with the stock seat rails sitting in the foam that we had planned with my headset on, I nearly contacted the ceiling. This is even with the seat almost all the way in the lowest position. After removing a layer of foam from the seat bottom, it's much better, but still close. Ideally I'd lower the seat some as well, but I don't want to redesign the seat rails right now, and it *should* work as is. Worst case, I will need to purchase and use a pair of Clarity Alofts or QT Halos that have no headband.

I'm 6' (maybe 6', .5", depends on who measures). An XL would probably be a better plane for me, but that wouldn't have been in the budget. ;)

On the 19th, I drew more lines on the panel and got it to 90% completely laid out. I then cut out the area of the panel where the throttle and mixture will go, and then laid up a 4 bid flange around the outside of that cutout so that the panel can be removed without the engine controls needing to be removed. Big help. It also makes the panel easier to install and remove from the plane.

 

As a side note, we chose a fixed pitch over a constant speed prop for budget reasons, but we'll probably want to upgrade later, so I left room in this side panel for the prop control to slide between the throttle and mixture.

That's it for today!
- Jeff