Sam Buchanan's RV6 The Panel |
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Page One
1/2/99; 4.0 hrs; cut holes in instrument panel.
Shown are the cool instrument drill jigs fabricated by RV4 builder Mark Spry.
Panel on the WorkMate, ready for tray installation.
1/7/99; 1.5 hrs; mounting avionics trays.
4"x7" angles were fabricated to secure the three trays. No rear support for the com radio will be required. The black thingie in the lower left corner is the audio transducer for the Umonitor alarms.
Nearly ready to paint panel.
1/12/99; 0.5 hrs; painted panel with Rustoleum "Smoke Gray".
1/14/99; 2.5 hrs; filling up the holes in the panel.
1/17/99; 1.5 hrs; created labels for panel and cabin.
The core of this label project is Avery Labels product #2660. These are sheets of 1" x 2 5/8" clear labels that are designed for laser printers. I made a template in Microsoft Publisher 97 that matched the label layout and created the various markings needed. It is very easy to experiment with various fonts and sizes to get the effects you want. I ended up using a bold rounded Arial font.
Here are some of the resulting labels. I put a "box" around each label so there would be a good way to hide the edges of the label once it was installed. Scissors were used to trim the labels form the sheet; Cut very close the the edges of the box to make the labels blend into the panel.
As you can tell, the transparent labels assume the color of the panel. Note the push to talk switch installed on the passenger side of the panel; This location makes it unnecesary to fool with switch wiring when removing and inserting the passenger control stick. The Aux Input is a music (or handheld radio for monitoring another frequency) input for the PS501 intercom.
These labels are hard to read in the photo, but they look great in the airplane! I added "Pull for Idle" to the throttle label, and corresponding "Pull for xxxx" instructions to the other engine and heat controls. The computer makes custom labels very easy to create, and they can be much more detailed than is practical with more traditional methods. The temptation, of course, is to label everything!
If a label is damaged or needs to be changed, it will be a simple matter to peel off the old label and install a replacement.
Please submit all questions and comments to sbuc@hiwaay.net
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