The International Cessna 170 Association

PART THREE - LET'S MAKE STUFF Earlier today, I drove out to the hangar to put the machine to use. I still had leftover flame-resistant ABS plastic sheet and was able to cut out five (5) total pieces to fit my newly created machine. In addition, I had ordered a supply of standard ABS plastic sheet fr...

PART TWO - THE MACHINE I was scratching my head on this one. Yes, you can purchase commercial vacuform machines but for the average person not only is this typically a one-use machine but they are prohibitively expensive. The good news, however, is that there are a lot of resources on the Internet f...

STEP ONE - THE PREP: I used much the same prep process that I used to design out the decorative instrument panel overlay. I fired up a design program on my computer and quickly drafted out both a left and a right design in a few short minutes. I had spent a little time earlier that day at the hangar...

BACKGROUND: Two months ago, I created a post in which I detailed the process that I used to create a new decorative instrument panel overlay from flame-retardant ABS plastic. You may recall that my wife had a coworker who had access to a thermal vacuform machine that was just barely able to accommod...

Finally got around to a test flight both at night and during the day. Really happy with the way the project turned out. My first observation is that the Nulites put out significantly more light than I anticipated. I have the dimmer switch turned down almost to the point where it's off; however it's ...

PART FIVE - THE INSTALL and we are FINISHED It was a good day to spend in the hangar. The sun was out, and it was a beautiful spring day with just enough cool in the air to warrant a light jacket in the morning. A day I would have typically taken my wife and 62C on a trip for a date-lunch someplace....

PART FOUR - NULITES After returning from a work trip to Dallas, TX this week and recovering from some serious meat-sweats incurred after wonderful dinner at Lockhart Smokehouse (important note: if you wear a suit to dinner, it will smell like BBQ the next day ... that is not a bad thing), I attached...

PART THREE - THE PAINT I was scratching my head a bit about how to actually finish the plastic and then it occurred to me: it's the same thing as an automobile bumper. Bingo! There is a ton of information on the Internet about how to re-finish an automobile bumper. The first step was to lightly sand...

PART TWO - THE PLASTIC Now that the plug was ready, I ordered a piece of ABS plastic sheet from Aircraft Spruce (see: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cspages/absplasticsheets.php?clickkey=21974). I had several local options for ABS plastic, and my wife's co-worker offered up several contacts ...

PART ONE - THE PLUG The first part of the process was to create a plug that would sit on the vacuform machine. In previous attempts I hand-drew a template and cut it out of 3/4" MDF. That produced an unreasonable number of failures: either the shape was wrong, or there were inconsistencies, or ...

Ok ... after a year of starts and stops, I think we finally have this one in the bag. I've been wanting to create a new instrument panel overlay for quite some time. The existing overlay in 62C is aluminum, but was created by a past owner or mechanic, many years ago, after - and before - flight inst...

I'm happy to help out, too. My hangar is only a few hundred yards from Spruce "East" and I can just swing by and pick up whatever you need. PM me if you would like.

Brian

Thanks for the heads-up, Steve! A short flight from Peachtree City ... this will need to be a regular stop for me and 62C.

The panel overlay in my plane could use replacement. From the work I have seen done on this message tread, has anybody created any Cad files of the acrylic with outer dimensions and hole pattern locations with the artwork as well? I have access to a laser cutter/engraver and would like to make a ne...

Gary - I would be curious to that as well. My research was very myopic to my particular aircraft and pretty much to the exclusion of everything else. Thankfully I have a talented daughter who is a graphic designer and was able to track down a current font that is pretty much dead-on. Ryan (and Bruce...