New and old

As I had the new sheet of aluminium that arrived from Germany on Friday and it was too windy to fly today in the Weedhopper, after completing the main assembly work on my little microelectronic gizmo, I was a able to press on today with fabricating my Savannah’s new instrument panel. Here’s how far I got. That’s the new one on the bottom below.

I learnt the lessons well from my previous efforts and this time I took plenty of time to mark everything out and spot drill the centre of each hole that I had to drill. You can see that the main changes that I’ve made compared to the original layout are in the centre section where I’ve moved the right hand pair of large gauges (rev counter above, VSI below) a bit to the left to allow the section to accommodate four rather than just three smaller diameter instruments (slip ball and fuel pressure above and radio and transponder below). I think that the layout works pretty well and looks quite neat.

I was thinking about taking some time off tomorrow for a flight in the Weedhopper with Wim but finishing off the panel is my main priority otherwise I’ll never get away to the UK. So I’m going to press on and continue with this work instead tomorrow and will hopefully get the panel finished, bar unforeseen mishaps, all except the painting, which shouldn’t take any more than another day. Then I’ll be able to think about going flying, while the paint’s hardening, if the weather decides to play ball that is 😉