Here the rubber meets the road. This panel and the instruments really need to fit.

Now that it’s time to fix the front panel to the cockpit I’m thinking through where screws are going to go. On the left side I need to fix the drop in panel tray unit unit as well as the front panel with screws that go through both. To do this I need a two stage lip.

I did clean this up later and removed quite a bit of the glass edge that was excess. I don’t always show the pretty work first.

Can you see I have a big thick lip behind the frame lip? The rear one is a 12 ply layup that took two cure cycles to get right.

Does this make sense now?  The big tray holder goes in the front and sits on the back lip. as pictured.

The thickness of this tray then meets up with the frame lip. When I put the big panel on I can now drill through the front and tray panels and put a nutplate behind this new glass lip that will hold both items with one fastener.

I’ve had a real problem trying to get the Garmin GTN750 to just slide into its tray. It was catching and I’ve spent hours sorting this out. In the end, the very end, I found maybe half a millimeter or less movement pushing the frame helped the GTN750 slide in happily.

If I didn’t fix this then you’d have to remove the main screen, push on the frame to get the 750 in or out. A real maintenance snag for later, so I needed to fix it now. The answer was to embed a nutplate Just below the level of the side so that I could nip it up tightly and get that tiny movement to the left correct and stable.

After the nutplate was set in and secured with 2 Ply of BID it took the screw as you see above and problem fixed. I shake my head at how long these things take to get right.

Now its working on getting the main face plate secured to the instrument tray complex. I’ve been using clicos up until now. I could only fit a very slim nutplate at the top but did have room for a floating plate lower down. It’s super tight with no margins.

This shows some of the G3X surround nutplates from the front that I mentioned in the last blog. You can also see regular screws instead of the clicos meaning I am progressing in getting this thing locked down. It must be serviceable too, thats a huge consideration and why some of this is taking so long.

Yes it will be pretty later I assure you. Nice thick paint on the panel will cover the rivets and I’ll have to paint the screw heads too of course.

Next to the audio panel I’ve made a new fitting . It has adjustable plates on the side so I can line up the front of the panel perfectly. I’ve gone for screws and a nutplate at the front. This is so the whole front panel can be removed relatively easily, leaving the spacing screws intact. Space it tight but it is easy enough to work around the switch placement.

This is the front side with countersunk screws that will get a little paint as I mentioned and they should disappear to some degree visually.

The panel and the trays are starting to come together. Tomorrow I’ll start on the left side fixings and see how it goes.