The center panel, all lit up for the first time. The two EFIS screens are AFS-3400's with fully redundat AHRS & magnetometers, etc. Right of the left EFIS is a PSE PM4000 audio panel at the top, the trim indicators, and a TruTrak Digiflight II VSGV autopilot. The center Garmin stack includes a GNS-430W GPS/NAV/COM, an SL-40 COM2, and GTX-330 Mode S transponder. The 6 annunciator LED's on top of the left EFIS are -- left to right with increasingly dire colors -- for A/P, AUX ALT, E-bus, Master Caution (EFIS alerts), Low Voltage, and Low Oil Pressure -- the latter two are blinking, of course. Normal daylight VFR panel configuration is all lights out and all switches DOWN, except for the MASTER BAT/ALT switch, and NAV/STROBE switch just above the MASTER.

Preliminary power up tests on the center panel have gone OK, so I've updated the headline photo with a "live" one showing screens lit up and some lights illuminated. Because several coax cables and wires are still hanging out in the wings and fuselage unconnected, I'm taking it slow and won't leave fuses inline for long on those circuits that may still be "exposed."

Another landmark day. For the first time, the whole panel is in place with all the avionics! Still lots of testing to do on the center section gear, and no doubt some debugging, but it's a great day night in MOFN.

Turns out that there are so many minute adjustments needed to the multitude of cable and tubing routing, that the individual avionics instruments in the front panel have to be put in one-by-one. As the wires compress behind the units, they take on new shapes necessary for routing, chafe protection, etc., and those new routes affect the layout of the pitot static plumbing as well. Earlier I had thought I would try to make the pitot static plumbing long enough that the units could be pulled out while still attached. However, there's no longer any point in doing so -- if there ever was. Unless the entire panel can be efficiently (?) slid into and out of the center panel space as one unit, the individual units are placed one-by-one anyway. In fact, all four of the major instruments (EFIS's, audio panel and A/P) attach to the back of the finish overlay panel anyway... or to put it another way, the finish panel attaches to the front of them. Unfortunately, if the whole panel will not lift out as a unit, maintenance will require gettting underneath -- which will be tough to do with a fixed control column installation. Perhaps there's a way to re-engineer that. In the meantime, the center instruments are going into place. With all the wiring behind, they're not quite as precarious as they look in this photo.

The thornier issue has been tracking down pesky leaks in the pitot plumbing. Initially, there was an airspeed leakdown at the rate of about 1/2 knot per second! When "none" is the standard, that's definitely too much. After isolating sections all along the "common manifold" of the pitot plumbing, I determined that most if not all of the leakage is occurring at the 1/8"  pipe thread junction between male Nylo-Seal fittings and female brass fittings on the instruments. After taking steps to seal those better, the leakdown rate is now 0.13 kts./second. Still too high, but a lot  better. With a little more attention, I should be able to lock this down properly.

Putting the center panel avionics in one-by-one to test pitot/static.

The center panel, set up near its final home, with both EFIS's powered up for the first time together. They're happy this way, talking to each other at first power up. Adjust the altimeter (baro) on one, it shows on the other. More connections and testing to come before this section can be slid back into place, but... a picture worth several thousand words.

Before the arrival of the ice age, there was quite a bit of this going on. The more times you forget to put an essential part or tool within reach (and that's a lot of times) the better it is for the abs.

Quite a bit of this work.

Why it takes so long to build an airplane:

It has taken nearly five days (!) of work to complete 1) installation of the EI SC-5 clock, and 2) the Perihelion Design LVWAABM (low voltage warning and auxiliary battery mgmt.) units. Unbelievable, but true. Having spent that much time already, I'll try to keep this story about it brief (but will fail.)

Engineering International (EI) is a great avionics company with great products. Their documentation is... thorough and precise, giving one considerable confidence that all the bases are covered. [Not]  In order to get A) the engine time timer, and B) the automatic flight timer working, the manual says that, in a 12V system, you should connect the orange wire to the oil pressure switch's normally open (N.O.) contacts such that when oil pressure develops with an engine start, +12V appears on the orange wire. Incidentally, the manual also tells you that in a 12V system, the brown wire should not be connected to anything.

Now earlier, when I got the clock turning on with the master switch, I had noticed that, after some period of testing various things, the clock was accumulating "engine time" already, so I thought I must have connected the orange wire to the same main +12V source (a red wire) in error. Unfortunately, that bit of wiring was not visible with the panel in place. What I should have done instead was make the orange wire (only) turn on via the oil pressure switch. As previously documented here, to get +12V from a N.O. contact is complicated, requiring a relay. So I made a relay. Nice little MIOIR relay.

When I got the new, relay-generated +12V wire over to the clock and pulled the panel off to do it, to my amazement, I discovered that I had not connected the orange wire after all. Whoa! The clock had been accumulating "engine time" just from +12V on the red, main power wire during testing! It was clear that the manual was wrong vis-a-vis the deployment of the orange wire.  $#@%*#  So I did what any sane person should have done a bit earlier, maybe, and called EI to point out the errors in their documentation, and seek a solution. The SC-5 clock has been sold for perhaps ten years. Why hadn't this problem turned up before? I never got an answer for that one.

After quite a bit of consultation, ultimately with not just tech support but also the engineers, it was determined that in fact, I was correct. Ta Da! Contrary to the elaborate manual, the orange wire was superfluous to control of the engine timer. (I still don't know what it does, if anything.) However, they assured me that if I connected the brown wire to the normally closed (N.C.) contacts of the oil pressure switch, such that like the oil pressure warning light, it is grounded (connected) until engine start, the clock would sense that "disconnection" and start the engine time timer as it should. [Ed.: The alert reader will remember, the manual specifically says not to use the brown wire for anything in a 12V system.] I couldn't believe it. So back to work and sure enough, it worked.

So, the bottom line is that what the manual said to do (use the orange wire) was incorrect, and what the manual said quite definitively not to do (use the brown wire for anything at all in a 12V system) was exactly what you had to do. More or less three days worth of time, down the drain. Did I mention &%#%$ ?

Similar shenanigans were required with the LVWAABM to get it working as it should. Another day and a half, and 10 days of waiting for a new part that wasn't even necessary, as it turned out. But I'll leave that for another, and better story. Maybe.

Today, it took two hours (!) just to mount the ELT remote to the left panel with four little 4-40 machine screws and fiber nuts, because the distance between the holes in the remote unit were a smidge wider than those cut from the mfgr.'s CAD file (used by the CNC water jet machine to cut the little holes a long time ago), and ultimately, various attempts at modifying the parts were necessary to get it in. Think small needle files, and small parts frequently falling and disappearing.

Geeez! Building an aeroplane takes a lot of time!