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I was on the road until late Thursday evening, I flew Friday evening, and Terry got home Friday night for a day and a half, then she was going back on the road again. So, I didn't get any work done from Wednesday, until early this afternoon after Terry headed back on the road.

This afternoon I put the holes in the panel where the knobs, switches and buttons of the intercom panel stick through the instrument panel. I didn't take a close enough look at the right side of the intercom box before I put the holes in the panel. It turned out that there is a small screw whose head is sticking out the right side of the intercom box, and it interferes with the piece of angle that attaches the avionics trays to the panel. I had to remove that screw to allow me to fit the intercom box to the panel, but that isn't an acceptable permanent fix. I'll have to grind a piece out of the angle to make room for the screw head.

Next, I decided to power up the GNS-430 and GTX-327 to make sure they worked. Garmin's warrantee is only good for one year from the date of purchase, so I need to know soon whether these two boxes are OK.

I spent a while studying the wiring diagrams in the Installation Manuals, then I got out the multimeter to be sure the power lines in the wiring harness weren't shorted to any of the other pins in the connectors. If power were to go to the wrong pins that could cause a lot of damage.

I've got a small 12 volt power supply that was made by an unknown RV builder a few years ago. He passed it onto to another builder, who passed it on to me. I'll give it to someone else once I'm done with it. I was very relieved, and very excited to see the displays come to life once I connected the power supply to the wiring harness and turned on the avionics. No smoke escaped from the boxes (it is common knowledge that avionics are powered by smoke, as evidenced by the fact that if the smoke ever leaks out of the avionics box, it will stop working).

It was very neat to see the avionics come to life! I also plugged the CDI into the wiring harness, and it did all the right things as the GNS-430 went through its self test sequence.