OK, so I haven’t been super productive this past week or so, at least in terms of shop time. I did take a giant leap this past Thursday, though…after exchanging a few emails with the folks at SteinAir and running a couple quotes, I finalized and placed my avionics order. Sounds like I can expect to have all that on hand in maybe a week and a half, assuming nothing is backordered at the manufacturer.
This has me back to getting serious about the remaining avionics shelf design, specifically the two shelves I’ll be putting behind the panel. I did a bit of layout work this morning, trying to finalize the design and measurements, but didn’t really get that far. For some reason I’ve been having trouble getting into a work mindset.
This also has me thinking about what else I want to have on-hand to really start laying out and fabricating harnesses. With the main avionics order placed, that takes care of almost all the stuff I’ll need wiring for. The exceptions are the ELT, the assortment of switches and breakers, and the SDS CPI2 ignition controller, so I’m likely going to get those ordered semi-soon as well. This is mostly simple, with the possible exception of the CPI2 – one of the things I’ll need to know before ordering is the required harness lengths.
The main thing that makes that fun is knowing the required lengths for the firewall-forward stuff. I can figure out the required runs from the controller to the firewall penetrations, but I have no idea the required lengths past that. I should probably just get in touch with Ross, I imagine he can help here.
I still need to finish up riveting the forward bottom fuselage. Finalizing the avionics shelf will probably require me to at least rivet the baggage bulkheads into place, and having those in place will make it a bit more fun to get to the rivet locations inside the cabin for the bottom fuselage riveting…