One of the traps that you can fall into when building an airplane is to purchase things way before you need it. With electronics, this can be especially troublesome since the radio that you buy today can be antiquated (or obsolete) by the model that comes out 6 months later.

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out how all the different boxes which make up the avionics suite are going to fit on the avionics shelf. I don’t have most of the equipment yet since I don’t want to buy anything until I absolutely have to have to.

The dimensions are readily available but after spending a few hours drawing and playing with 3D CAD software, I decided to go old-school. I got some leftover blue foam and made mockups of the various boxes.

Here are the two communications radio & single navigation radio (on left), transponder, audio panel, dual AHRS (under audio panel), GPS, two trim controllers and Vertical Power VP-X Pro (under the GPS and trim controllers).

After moving things around and not being able to make everything fit, I decided that I needed more shelf space. So I made a sub shelf that will go above the VP-X.

This is the VPX sub-shelf (from the front).

Because the trim controllers have adjustments for the trim motor speed, they need to be accessible. So I made a stacked mount for them.  Here is the view of the avionics sub-shelf from the rear.

And here is how the avionics boxes will be laid out (for now).