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April 12, 2003 Day 207, 1504 hours The first chore this session was cleaning the windows and preparing the aircraft for installation of the panel and systems testing. Cleaning the windows was awful! The masking tape had hardened and adhered tenaciously to the plastic. It took several days of hard work and the expertise of the Velocity personnel to salvage the Plexiglas windows. If you are building a Velocity and have masking tape on your windows, take it off now and use something else! |
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April 16, 2003 Day 210, 1528 hours This picture shows the barrier panel that was fabricated for the canard compartment. This panel is necessary to prevent a blast of air in the cockpit when the landing gear is extended. The nose gear door opens into the nose compartment, and without this bulkhead the air would travel over the canard and into the panel area. |
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Month 19, 2003 Day 213, 1550 hours The wiring begins in the last remaining section of the panel, where the gyro instruments are mounted. In spite of the Approach Systems hub, which reduced the wiring substantially for the avionics, there was still a lot of wiring to be done on the panel. |
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April 19, 2003 Day 214, 1557 hours Finally, the panel was completed and installed in the aircraft. This view shows the back of the instrument panel as seen from the open canard compartment. The windows have been recovered with paper and a better kind of tape was used to secure the protective covering. Systems testing will begin next session! |