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The Ultimate Homebrewed Cockpit
By Gene Buckle
Starboard side looking forward
This is the right side of the aircraft as viewed from the rear. You will notice the round hole just aft of the forward avionics bay hatch. This is where the AOA or Angle of Attack vane was installed. There is a mate to this one on the left side of the fuselage.
Along the bottom of the image, you can see the open avionics bays. There are four of these bays, two on each side of the aircraft. The bays on this side not only held some of the black boxes used by the avionics, but held the crew oxygen bottle as well. In a future installment I'll have a close up of each compartment, including that one. I'm hoping to be able to provide a list of what went where. :)
What's that under the primer?
Welcome to my new office! Wipe your feet first! I think the most important thing in this image is something you can't even see. Right underneath the windscreen is the former pilots' name. It's been poorly covered with gray primer. Rob & I hope to be able to get a readable name from this by carefully removing the paint. Contacting this man would not only be a crown on the history of this airframe, but it's also the only way we'll ever have of identifying the serial number.
As you can see, the trim piece around the windscreen is missing. This will also have to be fabricated from scratch. You can see the worst of the damage in the right corner of the image. I'm not sure why this was done, or what was behind it, but it's going to have to be repaired. I've never done sheetmetal work before, so this is going to prove to be quite a learning experience!
The ejection seat rails are still in place, which is a big bonus. This will guarantee that the ejection seat will be at the correct angle and location when it's installed. The only down side to this is that the cockpit will have to be wheeled outside for the installation as my workshop only has a 9-foot ceiling.
