Center Console

Today I started on a rough-cut of a home-brew center console I want to make. Instead of putting the throttle/prop/mixture controls up on the panel like many RV's, I want to put mine down on the tunnel, closer to the armrest, and then use the center console area for a radio stack, switches, etc. The general idea came from a photo I saw of Greg Hale's famous (perhaps infamous) RV-10, N210KH:

Greg Hale's RV-10

Say what you want about some of the other modifications he made to this aircraft, but the interior is stunning. Van himself wrote a fairly scathing review of this airplane, visible here (link). I actually spoke to Van at Oshkosh this year and thanked him for writing that article, because I believe it has helped me resist many of the temptations that are out there to go balls-to-the-wall with modifications and not realize the safety implications of changing major parts of the design. I highly recommend reading that article if you haven't already. Anyway.... back to the interior and center console, which has steered clear of that sort of scrutiny. Although I'm not personally a fan of the color or wood grain trim, and I'll have a slightly different avionics configuration, I do like the general form and layout of this panel, and will use this as an inspiration for my own less-fancy design. Off to the workbench to further my metal-forming skills!

The tunnel cover is about 5.5" wide and 10.5" down underneath the front of the panel and slowly expands to 6.5" wide about a foot further forward under the panel. The sides of this center console need to be at least 6.3" wide in order to fit a radio stack. So, I took two pieces of 0.032" aluminum sheet and made matching conical bends (basically a mini-version of what was done to the mid fuse skins) to attach to the tunnel covers, and then bent them outwards at the top to "flow" into the panel. I made a temporary jig out of hardware-store aluminum angle to keep both pieces square and straight and clecoed it all into place:

Rough-cut of the center console

Looks good so far! Well, it looks "ok" so far. Good from 10 feet, but still have quite a bit of trimming and tweaking. For the most part it is square and centered, and at a 6.5" width it should accommodate a radio stack quite well. The filler pieces inside there are only temporary as described above, and ultimately it will just be a 6.5" x ~10.5" cavity to flush-mount my GPS's (i.e. GTN650 etc). Covered with upholstery and everything, it should look pretty slick. I hope, anyway.

That's pretty much it for today! As any builder will say, once you start going off the plans to make stuff like this, it takes 10x as long. Tomorrow I'll probably get around to fixing yesterday's goof with the F-1044 angle, and maybe start on the baggage compartment section!