OK I am making a custom panel here to get it JUST the way I want it, and we laid out the switches and stuff here on thin cardboard cut-outs on a wood panel that is cut perfectly to scale! It may seem a little silly to design a panel with a wood cut-out and some cardboard cut-outs like this, but... umm... it ain't! We actually put this in the cockpit, I sat in the cockpit and pretended to fly, making sure that everything was in just the right place! Compared to the standard Evolution, this panel has the Garmin displays HIGHER on the panel, and the switches on the BOTTOM of the panel. This is BACKWARDS from the standard panel. We do this so the Garmins are more directly in my line of sight. We have to tilt the panel BACK just a bit, though (about 6 degrees?) so the back of the Garmin PFD does not hit the upper deck of the nose of the airplane!Here is the layout I think we are sticking with:
As well, I cut a foam block to make it EXACTLY the size of the Garmin G900 displays that will go in the airplane so we can be sure that the avionics will FIT in there!
And here is the panel mock-up as seen from the back, built to make sure that there is ROOM behind the panel to place the instruments exactly like we want to.
In the near future, cockpit displays will be only 1" thick... not these huge ridiculous boxes that seem like they came from 1970. When avionics go flat-screen, we will be able to design somewhat-nicer cockpits and panels, without always having worry about having a huge amount of space BEHIND the panel.
