Fully loaded

Well, almost. The missing gauges and switches which you can see in the picture below are still in the aircraft and they’ll be fitted as soon as the completed instrument panel can be installed.

I’m over the moon with how it’s turned out. I made the panel for my old UK AX3, G-MYRO, which is now enjoying a new life in my French AX3, 28AAD, I partially re-made a panel for an X-Air in the UK before I came to France and I then made the panel for my French X-Air from scratch after I got here. But this one for my Savannah, F-JHHP (or 77ASY to give it its local ‘name’), is the one that I’m most proud of.

It was a bit tricky today getting all of the gauges to sit nicely in their allotted holes. The new transponder in particular was the least cooperative but it wasn’t its fault. I found in the end that the seating problem was down to the amount of paint that I’d applied around the lip of the hole and after I’d cleared some of it away, its screws all eventually lined up with the mounting holes and it sat in nicely, as the new radio had.

To finish off, I’ve now got to put a dab of Loctite on each securing screw thread and a second locknut on the securing screws of the instuments that have them around the periphery of their dials. I’ll then be able to start on the work of installing the panel in the aircraft, starting with the transponder antenna and then the wiring looms for the radio and transponder.

The looms will be the tricky bits because I have to solder all of the connections in the connecting ‘D’ plugs and as of now I don’t know which cables coming from the headset plugs are for the mics and which for the headphones. But I’ll find out. The rest to complete the job should be easy as it’ll just be a matter of replacing connections etc that have all been labelled up in the aircraft. That will be the really exciting bit!