Another eight days went into just the mounting of three trays. First I had a small problem to fix.

Some months ago I had carefully floxed and glassed a tube to point the rudder cable towards the pedals. This meant it had to be about .25″ off the side wall. I really needed that .25″ back! The Garmin GTN750 wanted more space.

I spent quite some hours getting that tube off the wall, very carefully and with zero cable damage.

The tube was then re-fixed to the side wall after bending the metal. It will still be fine for the rudder and I had regained that little bit of needed space at the rear of the 750 tray.

This gives an idea of one of many ideas I have to utilise the space behind the main panel instruments.

Again lots of thought and I seemed to have a plan to mount a few trays.

Its heavy and clumsy but almost working. I was thinking I could cut and drill a lot of lightening holes. The mid tray needs to be offset so I can get the ADS-b unit out when I remove the G3X display. Trust me that things need to be maintainable within reason.

Nope, it was too ugly. I rethought and decided to use some composite skills and make a lighter rack holder for the top remote radio. Some aluminium sheet and two click bonds with glass did the job.

Now I’m much happier for this lighter and more elegant top unit solution. The rest was going in the scrape metal box as a fail. Oh… and there was another problem with it. The whole mount was about 3/8″ too much to the right, that offset was too offset,  and it contacted the auto pilot servo on the canard when I did a trial fit.

A couple more days work and I had this new idea of using .063″ sheet and small blocks instead of angle aluminium.

I went for proper nut plates and countersinking too.

It went together well in the end.

This is how the blocks work. Other ones were much smaller. I may drill holes in it later. I hate excess weight, on me and the plane. Both have too much.

Here’s the mount for the remote radio on top, the ADS-b goes in the middle tray and the audio panel tray is on the bottom and facing the panel. It is rock solid. Yes I know I have to make lightening holes and round the corners. Don’t try to suck me into doing it now. Every time I go early I find I should have left a bit of meat somewhere I didn’t.

For now, I can call this good and move on to a metal rather than MDF panel frame. I need to get really precise for the next part of the fit out.