Now that I have an RV6 one of the first requirements was to bring it into the 21st Century. That meant I wanted to take advantage of all of the latest technology and install systems that were better than what you would find in your typical Cessna that we all trained in.

One of the key upgrades I needed was a heated Pitot system with a better indicator than just burning your hand to test that it was working. The two pictures above show the pitot on the new pitot mast and the control board installed in the wing.

This keeps the pitot warm, but not hot, and has indicators in the cockpit to show the temperature and cycle status. In place of the old pitot I installed the Garmin OAT probe.

Another key upgrade was the autopilot servos that tie into the Garmin G3X. Garmin sells a mounting system specifically for the RV6 and I had hopes this would make this an easy afternoon install. Unfortunately not all RV6’s are built exactly the same so my install took a few days of test fitting and adjusting before it all fit perfectly. One nice feature is that the autopilot integrates nicely with the Ray Allen trim servos that were already installed. (See Below)

The next big job is the fabrication of the panel. I have all of the modules required and I just needed to create enough places to mount everything. What I’ve ended up with is the front panel for the instruments, a subpanel about 8 inches behind that, and then a hinged bottom panel which I can swing down to mount things and for access. It’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle but I hope to have pictures for the next newsletter. I’ve included a picture (below) from another builder to show how he packed everything into his RV10.

Brian

Friend’s RV10 installation.