Chapter 13/22 – Lower right panel

I started out the day once again pulling peel ply and cleaning up the layups on the aft nose/avionics cover thru-panel CAMLOC hinge tabs, only this time on the forward (nose) side of each tab.

I then configured and designed the G10 tabs for the aft nose/avionics cover interlocking hinge latches.  I was in a rush since my friend needed someone to watch her daughter for most of the day as she went to an appointment, so round 1 of the hinge tabs, when I assessed them later, in position at my desired mounting point on the inside surface of the aft nose/avionics cover, were too short to comfortably fit the 2 rows of rivets I planned on using to secure the G10 pieces to the aluminum hinge sections.

Of course I discovered all this much later in the evening (the second and final versions are at the end of this post).

Once my little shadow had left early evening, I took a break for a bit before heading into the shop.

Back in the shop I wanted to spend a good hour or so before it got too late to use the very loud Fein saw to finish making the pockets on the back side of the panel (technically forward/nose side. . .) for the big 3 lower right panel switches.

Here’s a shot of the lower right panel after removing material from the original composite panel bulkhead for the switches to fit properly and deep enough.

Note in the upper left corner you can see where i also cut out the sidewall bracket that secured a couple of electrical connectors.  That will be moved up slightly and forward a hair.

I also cut out material in the original panel to mount the alternate static source switch on the upper left side of the panel.

With the lower left, middle strut, and lower right panel components mounted, I’m now moving into the middle area of the panel, which only has a few components: the aforementioned (complete) alternate static source switch and the 2 EFIS remote USB panel ports on the middle right edge of the panel, just below the longeron.  I’ll try to knock those out tomorrow.

After I made the major noise with the Fein saw, I got busy redesigning the next version of the G10 tabs for the aft nose/avionics cover interlocking hinge latches.  On these new versions I really only added about a 1/4″ along the bottom edge next to the actual hinge tabs to –again– ensure enough area to have 2 row of rivets.

So here we have the final versions of the interlocking hinge tabs that will be installed. It’s late now so I am kicking this task off until tomorrow.

The install process will be to 5-min glue these to the underside of the aft nose/avionics cover when it is in the down position, with the hinge pins installed.  One reason I needed taller G10 tab sections is that I wanted to push the attach points to the inboard on the aft nose/avionics cover.  This will align these tabs more center in the thru-holes in the aft nose substructure, and also provide more clearance with the protruding rivets since I wanted to mount them head side on the G10 for a more secure grip.

Tomorrow I’ll try to knock out the install of these hinge tabs by getting them glassed to the cover.

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