December 9 2024
Because this aircraft has a center stick it is required to think out the placement of switches in the panel for best practical use. I have made a couple of errors in this regard and thought I would share with the others interested where my errors were.
First of all I had placed my toggle switch for my elevator trim in the center vertical panel alongside of the indicator. This I knew was going to be temporary but gave me great grief right away during test flights. I found it very awkward to use my left hand to reach across to adjust the trim switch while flying. Luckily I have a stick grip with top mount switches and so made the rewiring to allow 2 of the top switches access to Pitch trim. This was the plan all along but needed modification without delay. Originally I wanted to operate the RAC trim servo using the supplied parts to make sure all was working properly before modifying to the stick grip. The trim now is very convenient to operate using the stick grip switches.
The other item I recently installed was the remote Auto Pilot (AP) engage/disconnect switch. Because your left hand is not busy usually I placed the AP switch very close to my left hand position which is on the throttle quadrant. This position is working out very well. The AP switch has three functions, to cancel the AP if active, to engage the AP if it is not already engaged, and to enter into Control Wheel Steering (CWS) if the AP is already engaged. The CWS function is very handy as you can press and hold it which will allow you to hand steer into a new heading then release and the AP will continue on that course. Excellent for routing around clouds or whatever. So this button will get used quite often.
Finally mounted in mid panel is the Emergency Wings Level button. I placed it here so that it could be accessed by either the pilot or passenger. It would seldom be required so ergonomic placement was not critical to me.
