Welcome to the heart of the airplane.  For me this is the only reason that I built my own... well maybe the biggest reason.

Wiring afterglow.

Good karma design philosophy "Always provide a back-up".  Don't be afraid to stack the deck in your favor.  You never know when it will pay off.

( click on picture for a much larger view )

As with every builder, I designed the panel that I have always wanted but could never have in a spam can.  I spent most of my flying days looking down at my leg where my 195 GPS was strapped but NO MORE.  Now I can fly the plane AND look at the HSI display.  I love this layout and can't wait to fly somewhere outside of my garage.  This baby is setup so that the pilot only has to scan from left to right to get the big picture.   I decided on the side by side mounting of the avionics because of cooling concerns.  It gets mighty hot in Texas and I didn't want to be concerned with my com shutting down because it was being toasted by my transponder ( as remote as this may be ).  I went with the standard steam gages for backup of my electronics.  You can never have enough backups.

Oh yeah, the 195 GPS has an internal battery back up which kicks in instantaneously when external power is cut.  This means that if I need to cut ALL power, my airspeed, altimeter, and GPS will continue to function as if nothing has happened.  Cool!

The alignment of the HSI display on the GPS was no accident.  The 195 has a cool feature that you can set up so that it will provide you a visual reference by placing a line across the display so that you can set your glide slope to destination altitude.  Just keep the line centered as your descending to pattern altitude and before you know it your in the pattern.  This is particularly important to us RV pilots since we have the ability to climb out so fast and cruse at a relatively high altitude.  It's also plumbed to work with the Navaid wing leveler.  I managed to install that under the right foot well.  I also installed a digital clearance recorder because I when I 'm jockeying for position in the pattern of a busy airport I can barely remember my name much less what approach control just told me to do.  This recorder will record up to thirty seconds of com verbiage and play it back at the touch of a button.

Yes, that's right sports fans, I decided to go the fuse panel route and never look back.  It made the wiring ten times easier and is more reliable than the mechanical counter part ( circuit breakers ).  The only circuit breaker in this plane is hooked up to my alternator.  All the supplies came from AeroElectric Connection ( switches, fuses, lugs, OV protection circuit, grounding lugs, ect. ) and Van's ( wiring kit ).  I highly recommend doing business with Bob.  Good products and quick turn around time, a real straight shooter.  I also went the essential bus route.  If you look closely you can see that the left two blocks are wired together and the right block has all the nonessential stuff attached. This can be be knocked out of the loop with one of the few switches on my right switch panel.

This is my "keep it simple" switch panel.  At the top is the dimmer which dims everything but the lights over the gas gages.  I found that by the time I had dimmed down the big back lights on the larger displays, I could no longer read the gas gages ( this is a bad thing ).  So the gas gages shine bright and hopefully will remind me to look at them from time to time.  The top switch is my night running switch.  It turns on the cabin lights, instrument lights, and all the back lighting on my digital displays.  Notice how the switches are spaced by function.  The top set is interior lighting.  The middle is battery management, and the bottom three are external lighting ( navigation, strobe, landing/taxi/flash ).

On the stick is trim control for the elevator only.  I have a set of relays attached to the left and right buttons on the stick to turn on and off the trim power.  I wanted instant access to "total kill control" over my electric trim.  No run away trim is going to ruin my day.

Since I just love dinking around with the electronics, I needed max access so I followed the path of many RV builders before me and cut a large access way through the baggage bulkhead.  About the only thing new to the standard access cutout was my addition of hinges on both top and bottom. I also replace the cut out and made the door out of 063 aluminum plate to provide a much stronger surface to mount the fuse panels and provide the much needed bulkhead strength.   I used the standard George O technique of removing eyes in the center of the top hinge to allow for removal of the hinge pins for easy access.

As you can see from the exposed fuse panels, I have ground access to all the fuses and gobs of access into the back of the panel from the forward baggage compartment.

Another panel left item of interest is the built in halon fire suppression system.  Notice the red handle just above the fuel selector.  In case of a Fire Wall Forward fire I just turn off the fuel, pop the pin, and deliver five pounds of halon to the engine in two places.  I decided to place one halon jet where the fuel and oil lines are concentrated.  The other jet is down by the carb.  More pictures of this installation are on the way.

Lights Out!!!  This is the stock Dimmer that Van's sells.  Good to 1.5 amps ( more than enough for most panels ) but a few parts were missing on mine.  After my install I noticed on night time simulations that every time I keyed my mic all the lights that were hooked up to the dimmer went out.  Boy is it ever dark in my cockpit with absolutely no lights.  ( note to self  - carry several clip on flash lights for night flights... )

A little examination of the printed circuit board revealed that the filter capacitors that are responsible for protecting the circuit against just such a radio frequency overload needed to be added.  I popped down to my local Radio Shack and picked up one 0.001 micro farad ceramic disk capacitor rated at least 25 volts and one 0.1 micro farad ceramic disk capacitor rated at least 25 volts.

This is a schematic of the circuit ( complements of 18 years of the RVator page 222 ).  Pretty simple.  The LM317 is the key to all this.  With the right cap protecting this everything worked great.  Key the mic and the light stays ON ( YES! ).

Here is a shot of the finished assembly.  As always, your mileage may vary, no warrantee expressed or implied.  This is just what worked for me.