Avionics started

I've been working with SteinAir on my panel and avionics (as much as I'd love to do it all myself, I'm afraid I might end up taking a long time, and at this point I want to get to the finish line without cutting any big corners). After a lot of patience on their part between my indecisiveness and the CO Guardian 455 being discontinued right when we thought we were done (it was gonna go on the left side of the bottom center panel), they designed an awesome panel, with room for future expansions (read: custom devices I can build later):

Final panel layout

While they were busy doing the wiring, I received the GSA28 servos and their mounts, and did the initial attachment/test fitting:

Roll servo attached inside the wing

Pitch and yaw servos attached in the tailcone

Yaw servo mount and servo in the tailcone

Interestingly, while the roll and pitch mounts were quite well finished, the yaw servo attachment, which happens to be the crazy expensive one ($750!), did not come finished and needed rounding of corners and overall deburring, so I did that and will prime them before installing permanently.

In the meantime, I also got exclusive spy footage from SteinAir showing my panel being built! (i.e. a friend went there and spotted it :) )

Panel being worked on at Stein

Panel being worked on at Stein

Center console at Stein

Finally, they completed the panel and I received it:

Unboxed panel at home!

After connecting all the antennas with patch cables, it lives and all the smoke stayed inside!

Panel turned on for the first time after receiving it

The first step after inventorying everything was, of course, to disassemble it :) The Aerosport panel has a metal backing which needs to be attached first, and to get to it one must get to the main carbon fiber frame, and to get to that you must remove all the inserts, and removing the inserts is easiest if you remove the units as well, so the whole thing came apart:

Disassembled panel for attachment

I had also ordered some custom cables with right-angle QMA connectors crimped to one end, for the bottom TAS antenna (those connectors are a bit annoying to solder after they're crimped), so I installed those in place (will wait to tighten it when I officially run the wires:

Bottom TAS cable run inside the tunnel

Now it's time to work on sections 31 and 41 to install the panel in place (separate post about it), before I actually run the rest of the wires. The plans are extra vague around these bits and don't include the Aerosport panel, so I'm counting the initial mounting of the metal panel/subpanel/ribs as section 31, and making any openings/mods to that structure as section 41.

Time lapse:

Total avionics time: 6.8h