I went to Home Depot and grabbed a small piece of 1/4" underlayment to make the cowl jig disc out of (1/2" would have been stiffer, but the clecos won't go through anything that thick). The wood is plenty flat, but fairly soft, so I decided to play around with fiberglass to give it a little more strength for drilling holes and holding clecos. The other reason I pulled out the fiberglass was to see if the epoxy I had was still good. I bought a bunch of fiberglass stuff from the guy I got the wing kit from, so it's been sitting in the garage for many years.
I just put one layer of fiberglass over the front of the disc, then brushed the remaining epoxy onto the back side. The epoxy is clear and seems to be setting up ok, so I think it's still fine to use. I'll have to wait until tomorrow for it to fully cure (the hardener I have is the slow cure stuff).
I received my avionics order, which means it's time to play with the panel now! They did mess up one part of the order though. They sent me two autopilot control panels vs one autopilot and one radio control panel. They're shipping me the radio, then I'll send back the extra autopilot panel. I'll post more pictures of the actual units later when I start putting them in the panel.
I've gone back and forth on the panel design, but I think I've landed on my final design. I'll have power and engine start toggles on the left (plus an alternate static toggle under a protective cover), and the rest of the switches in the center. I waffled on whether to put the Garmin G5 in the center of the center stack between the radio and AP or on the left side of the center stack. It's my backup attitude indicator if the primary screen fails, so I want it close to my line of site. In the end, I decided to keep it in the very center. It's designed so that it doesn't mount flush with the panel, but sticks out a half inch or so. If I put the radio to the right of it, I was afraid it would be an annoying visual obstruction. Since I'll use the radio all of the time and the G5 is just there as a backup, I decided to give the radio top billing. In reality, the G5 is still only slid over an extra 2". It will stick out over the AP panel, but I did a little role playing, and it should be fine. There is a flush mount kit for the G5, which I initially planned on using. The problem is it would require me to drop it down another 1/2" from the top and have at least 1/2" in between it and the next device below it. I don't have the panel space to do that, so unfortunately I have to live with the non-flush mount. I won't notice it after the first 5 minutes of flying with it, especially since the audio panel and GPS below it also stick out the same amount.
I will put the audio panel in right away, but the bottom GPS is just a space filler for now. I'm going to cut the hole in the panel and put a cover on it. That way when I do decide to go IFR and buy the GPS, at least I don't have to pull the panel out to cut it again. We'll see if that ends up working!
