The objective today was to fabricate and mount the blank instrument panel and fabricate the combing. The first picture shows the panel blank cut out of 0.090" 6061-T6 aluminium sheet and clamped to the mount installed yesterday. The size and shape of the top of the panel was designed to provide the maximum panel real estate whilst not limiting visibility out of the front or side windows when the aircraft is either on the ground or at flying attitude. A dummy combing was made from bits of scrap hardboard hinged at the folds with duck tape to provide a template for the 0.050" aluminium sheet used to form the actual combing. This was cut out and folded. Then a length of 3/4" * 0.063" right angle alumium extrusion was cut and riveted to the inside of the combing to provide the support for the top of the panel. The panel was then match drilled to the combing angles and to the tabs on the panel mount tubes. Finally, two pieces of aluminium were fabricated to close the gap between the ends of the panel and the door posts. These were match drilled to the combing and to the panel and riveted to the combing. That makes a full days work sound easy whereas it was a actually matter of repeatedly iterating the size, shape, and folds in the various components to get a good fit. At the end of the day I'm pleased with the result. Next I need to install the tabs to fasten the front and sides of the combing and install nutplates to take the screws that will hold the panel in place - that will also take longer to do than say!
