I have very little to show for the last week or so. I've mostly been confined to couch duty - babysitting the dog after her surgery. I just feel too bad putting her in a cone 24/7 and leaving her confined alone. If I'm there she at least gets the cone off.
The wiring up the center tunnel is finished (I hope), so I reinstalled the boost pump and fuel selector. Of course that wasn't as straight forward as you'd think it should be. Every time I add a part, the newest area of interference gets discovered. The nutplates on the top left side of the fuel pump plate were right on top of the wire runs, meaning the screws would be driven right into the wire bundle. I had to pull up the cable mounts and move them inboard as close to the brake lines as I could.
I still have a number of big things I can do before I route the wires to the subpanel/panel, but that day is approaching. In order to do that, I have to narrow in on my eventual panel design. It doesn't have to be perfect yet, but I do need to have a general idea of where things will go in order to split out the wires into smaller bundles and run them to the correct locations on the subpanel. I haven't taken the time to actually lay the panel out in CAD software yet (not sure if I will - I can either just lay the panel out by hand and cut it, or I could lay it out on the CAD and then have a vinyl sheet printed to lay on top of it and use as a cutting guide. The benefit of going that route is that I could then use the same file to have an actual vinyl overlay done, with all of the labeling just printed on it.). I found an online panel planner tool to play around with the general layout though. It's not precise enough to use for anything final, but at least provides a visual to then do my final design off of.
I started the design with my ultimate IFR panel, then went backwards from there to get a more basic VFR panel. This is the IFR version:
For the VFR version, I removed the IFR GPS and the second glass screen. I will cut the panel for these and put all mounting brackets in place, but then just put cover plates over the openings until I'm ready to go IFR (or I could 3D print some boxes to inset in the openings I suppose). If I decide it's handy, I could put an ipad mount on the right hand side and essentially use my ipad as a second screen. Or, if cost isn't a factor, I may just go with both of the AFS screens right out of the gate. I'll just play it by ear.
