While waiting on the finish kit, I worked on a few electrical to do’s on the build. The AC system is installed, but all the wiring still needed to be hooked up. The system’s controller uses relays and I decided to move the location of the fuse panel to the bulkhead for easy maintenance. The relays were labeled and mounted to angle aluminum on the equipment tray. A lot of wire connectors later, the relays are all hooked up and the wires up front are pulled. I also wired the condenser fan with a disconnect for future servicing. The only wire not run is for the compressor, as I may go with an electric compressor depending on a few things down the road.

I also received a sample of the electroluminescent panel to experiment with backlighting my instrument panel. Aircraft Engravers sent me a sample panel on acrylic that I put on the EL panel and am really excited about the results. The EL panel put off a nice amount of light and dimmed well. The sample panel looked great and is easy to produce as well. My plan is to have Aircraft Engravers produce the panel overlays in acrylic which I will mount on top of the metal panel inserts holding the avionics. The EL panel will be sandwiched in between. In theory, it will be a nice clean look to the panel and have a high end backlight to boot. I took the EL panel with me in the Diamond on a quick flight to see if there was any noise from the transformer and didn’t notice any issues. Not a overly scientific test, but enough to keep me motivated to make this work.

I only had a 1″ strip, so you can see the difference where the panel is not backlit. The EL panel is also white when off, not the typical pinkish so the panel during the day appears to have white lettering as typical. More to come on this!