While the doors were being worked, I picked up the carbon fiber parts that were at the painters getting clear coat sprayed.  I was smiling ear to ear walking out to the car with them.  The pieces turned out better than I had imagined and are darn near perfect.  The painter put two coats and while it has a nice gloss reflection, it’s not overly shiny.  The carbon really comes to life with the clear over it and I think it’s going to look great in the cabin.  I now regret painting the overhead instead of clearing it.  I have made up my mind if I ever have issues with the paint on the overhead, I’ll strip it and clear the carbon portion without a second thought.

At home, I had to put the push to start button and Aero Vents in to see how it looked and make airplane noises.  Some hours later, I got back to work printed out a few panels to see how things were going to fit and look.  I’ve been working for over a year on my instrument panel layout, playing with this and that, moving things around, and finessing the position of switches, etc.

I started with Panel Planner and really liked it for the ease and simplicity of it.  It is great at putting components in the panel and seeing what it will look like with all the fancy touch screens everywhere.  What it’s not good at is custom anything.  I never could figure out proper switch labels and the 310 switch panels weren’t loaded into the panel template, so I just stuck with the main layout on there.

Meanwhile, I reached out to Rob Hickman at Advance Flight Systems (Dynon) with a few technical questions about the AFS system.  We had a couple great conversations that led to him providing a quote for a “quick panel” customized to my liking.  Surprisingly, he was able to quote a complete panel far less than just the components from Stein!  I had planned on doing all of my own wiring, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity and deal, saving me money and time.  I started working with Stephan on the layout and wound up using Draftsight Plus at his recommendation to do more detailed drawing on the layout.  I decided to give poor Stephan a break and finish the final details myself as it was just easier and I’m a control hog.  Draftsight is based on a version of Autocad that I used back in high school so I was able to pick it up really quickly.  It’s also much easier and simpler than SolidWorks, as I don’t need computational fluid dynamics to label the Defrost Fans switch and put borders around switches.

The switch panels, upper, and lower console panels turned out great and were a good fit.  I was able to confirm the lack of need to reach across the center console for anything I’ll need in the cockpit except for activating the ELT, a major goal that I wanted after flying the DA-40 and constantly using my right-seater’s knee as a armrest.  Since I had already ordered the Apem toggle switches and Pilot Lights dimmers, I decided to mock up the overhead panel to finish the night off with more flow work and airplane noises.  I admit I’m pretty giddy about getting controls in the cockpit and I’m really happy with how they layout is working.  I can’t wait to get the panel and avionics from AFS installed to light everything up!