I started the process of visualizing my IFR panel.  Here's the first shot.  And all this can be yours for only $35K! 

TruTrak Digiflight 200 Autopilot Two words, Safety and Luxury.  This will provide the redundancy if the EFIS takes a dump.   I'm going with the Digiflight IIVSG.

Grand Rapids Technologies EFIS Horizon Series 1 (dual) on seperate bus.   The second one will show EIS/Graphical Engine Monitoring.

Garmin GNS 430.  I'm going to go with a one vendor approach for the avionics.  I think they will integrate easier.

AOA pro indicator.  If NAVY pilots use it why shouldn't I?

Thinking about a single alternator, dual buss, dual battery combination.  It's probably overkill.

Stand-by systems will include an AI, Airspeed, Altimeter.

And I'm probably going to only build one airplane in my lifetime, if it's the right one.  So empty the bank accounts.

I've got the loan, the paperwork is almost finished.  Still need to get a copy of my N# registration out to the bank.  A copy of my liquidity ($$).  Verification of Insurance.  (long story, see below).  And a Bill of Sale from Vans which I didn't get upon my first order.

There has been many questions placed about the process by which you finance your build if are not rich.  I make a good living but I'm not rich.  So I planned from the beginning to financing my aircraft.  If you are curios, I've made notes of my journey below.  If you have already done this or just don't care go here. :)  Dan's a hell of a nice guy and his website is awesome.

Ok let's start.  Here's what you will need.

- Fill out or print a copy of the Loan Application from NAFCO .  I haven't tried any other loan shops but Jim Jansen has been very kind and helpful and I feel I'm getting a good service.  And there aren't too many others out there either.

- Copy of your last two years taxes.  I couldn't find one years forms but I did have a copy of my W2 and that was acceptable.  Your mileage may vary.

- Gather every piece of the airplane you want to finance and get as much information you can about what you are buying.  Do this several times, every time refining the airplane and the costs.  Get many quotes from many vendors.  I did this for the engine, avionics, prop and firewall forward kit.  The spreadsheet is located here at the bottom.  But I did change vendors for one portion for the original spreadsheet.  Make sure you get pricing on everything thought of.  I plan on paying the taxes and shipping and a few other instruments out of my pocket.  To give you an idea, I had originally wanted to buy the Whirlwind 151 prop.  Found out they won't sell it to me because my engine is electronic ignition.  So I had to change the prop to the WW200RV.  I just think the 3-bladed props are just dead sexy.  Fortunately the vendor and price are the same.  At least I won't have to spend $1200 more for the Czech prop governor.  Vans governor comes in the FF kit.  Nice tradeoff.  Do your homework.

- The reason you need the above is that you must provide a Pro Forma Invoice from each vendor.  When you get approved you will get checks made out to your listed vendors in the amount of the Invoice for each.  You will have 60 days to spend the money, then the checks are no bueno.  Asks for this from each vendor. 

- You will need to provide Invoices from Vans showing kit delivery to date.

- You will need to provide pictures of the parts completed or not yet completed.  Having a website is great.  You just give Jim the web address.

- Fax all this in.  Answer any questions they may have over the phone. 

- Wait a few days and hopefully you'll get a nice call, and a scary one.  I was provided with a loan of almost 64K with terms of 7%, not too bad for something that doesn't quite exist yet.

- Insurance.  The evil.  I bought builders insurance up to $75K when I started building.  That's what I thought the plane would cost when completed.  What a joke.  Anyway, turns out that I may have to get *full* coverage (flying) because of the loan and the need for a Breach of Warranty (BOW) that the bank is asking for.  That's to keep me from flying an airplane with no wings and crashing into someone's house and asking the insurance company to pay the bank and then the insurance comes after me.  Phew!  I don't know the outcome of this yet.  I'm not sure if I will have to pay full insurance ($1920/yr) or builders insurance ($400/yr) while I'm building, because of the loan.

I'll let you know tomorrow, when I know, what the outcome is.  JT at Nation Air will call Jim Jansen tomorrow to see what they can work out.  Now if could just find a hangar nearby...

One note; I'm not affiliated with either company or personnel.  This is just my experience.

I haven't placed any of the switches or controls on this but you get the pictures.  Nice and clean.  Look at all that room for more electronic do-dads.  Building your own plane is the shiznet.

So here's how I'm avoiding that whole mess with the tip up canopy and the two ribs between the panel and sub panel.  I will end up moving them inward each 3 7/8 inches.  They will be between the avionics stack and the EFIS units.  Making sure to leave enough room for some angle on the sides of the avionics stack for mounting the avionics.  The line indicates the old position.   Vans should take note of this as several builders have done this.  They really should make this a two part rib.  But hey, it's easy enough to do yourself.

Match drilled the corner angles which hold the panel to the canopy decks.

Dry run.

You can see here I drew a line where the break (slight bend) happens in the sub frame.  I took this into consideration when I cut these pieces a while ago.  Just making sure everything lines up.  In the picture there is a slight misalignment.  I corrected that before drilling.

I made sure the distances between each new rib was the same and that the distance from the outer edge of the rib and the longeron were the same.  I wanted it to be straight so I took the extra time.  Then I drilled these sucker, #40 at first.  One thing you will notice if you look carefully is that the right and left ribs are swapped.  This means the rib angles face inwards.  This will give me a great place to lay angle across to support the aft portion of the instrument stack as it comes through this area.  Big Bonus!

And now that it's drilled why not take some pics with the canopy frame installed.  Vans, you listening????  You need to make some changes.  This is such a easy, non-structural modification to do.  And now you can make your panel any way you want.  Suit yourself.  BTW, there is plenty of room next to the avionics stack for some serious angle to hold the stack.

News media getting ready for a big day.  Now if only the wind would die down.  We were very skeptical that there would be a flight today because of the sustained winds.  But we were told that every morning it dies down.

Here's my "I was there Picture".

There were a LOT of people there (10,000) and a LOT of press.  We were surrounded.  IMAX guys to the right, news to the left. 

I got some pretty good video of the day.  I'll have to get it on the site but for now here are some stills of the craft after the historic flight.

What a great day.

Then when I got home, surprise, more goodies.  Here's my AOA Pro, CO detector and Davtron chronometer (you aren't allowed to call it a clock).

Today I received my order for a hobbs meter, boring.

I stuck all the mounting trays in with the instruments in place and made sure the alignment was perfect.  One thing to note is that the bottom tray does not rest on the edge of the forward most (real) panel so I used some angle to create a bottom brace.  Once I was satisfied with the alignment I pulled all the avionics out but the bottom unit.  I had the sides of the tray marked with a sharpie line to note how far in it should be.  You have to remove the avionics in order to drill the holes and when you remove the avionics the tray always moves.  For the first one I lightly clamped it into place.

Drilling the holes was no easy feat too.  It turns out that even a small angle drill doesn't provide enough clearance.  I marked each hole by scribing with a sharp 90 angle pick.  Next I very very carefully drilled the hole, starting with a sharp punch and smallest drill bit I had.  Once it is centered the rest is easy.

You end up putting in and taking out each piece of avionics about a hundred times.  I was only marking one hole on each side, drill it out, replacing everything back in the stack to check for fit, removing everything but the one I was drilling, mark the next hole on the opposite side and do it all over again. 

Here's the Swiss cheese angle support for the stack after all the drilling was done.  As you can see, even though all but one of these are Garmin products, the holes in the trays varies widely.

Next rivet the angles to the panel, being very careful to make the rivets as perfect and flush as possible.

Next it was time to make a single support strap for each side from the top of the angle to the lowest instrument.  And some final shots.

Going forward I wrapped the entire static line with a continuous sleeve of the corrugated conduit and passed it under the forward and aft canopy decks.  There is plenty of room for the static line and conduit to pass above the center section assembly.  It's perfectly out of sight.