My wife had a day off since family is in town, so I spent the afternoon with her and had some lunch down by the water. A nice little break from the build.
I then reviewed and did some background research on antenna cabling, my electrical notes, etc., so I didn’t make it out to the shop until early evening.
I worked on the initial bracket and spring attachment tab that I plan to rivet to the taxi light to add a spring between taxi light cover and the forward nose bulkhead to ensure the taxi light always retracts into the closed position, assisted or not by the actuator. No pics of all that as I’m just in the initial assessment phase.
I then riveted the 2 each K1000-6 platenuts onto the GNS-480 bracket that I just machined to allow me to mount that via the pre-existing holes in the bottom flange of the mounting tube.
Here we have the 2x K1000-6s installed onto the bracket, which then allowed the bracket to be attached to the GNS-480 via two #6 screws.
And a bottom view of the 2 screws securing the bracket to the bottom flange of GNS-480 mounting tube.
I then temporarily installed the GNS-480 mounting tube inside the avionics area, securing the tube to the instrument panel inner edges with 2 screws on each side.
Note the blue plastic covered 2024 aluminum support hanging down from the Clickbond mounted on the aft side of F28 (upper left corner). Also note the new 45° SkyRadar receiver mounting bracket (lower right corner).
And here is the 2024 aluminum support arm drilled and clecoed to the attached lower bracket.
I then trimmed the support arm to length, drilled the hole to attach it to the support bracket, pulled the plastic and cleaned it up. On the bracket itself, I installed a K1000-3 platenut to allow attaching the support arm to the new GNS-480 mounting tube (obviously via the bracket).
This ends the configuration prep for the GNS-480 tube. After I get the left-side panel wires wrangled and secured I’ll do the final install of the GNS-480 mounting tube, replete with the wiring harness and antenna connectors.