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I didn't get nearly as much done as I expected yesterday, as the Columbia accident was quite a distraction. It was a real shock when I learned about it, then I rushed to the computer to find out who was on board, fearing that one of the astronauts that we know could have been on board. I was quite relieved to learn that our friends were safe, but it is still a great tragedy for the families of those that were lost. God speed.

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Yesterday I deburred the holes for the flight instruments with a 2 inch diameter ScotchBrite wheel in a die grinder. The flight instruments are not all exactly the same size, so I had set the fly cutter to a size that suited the smallest instrument, which meant the rest of the instruments wouldn't quite fit. But, a few turns around each hole with the ScotchBrite wheel opened them up the additional few thousandths of an inch required to get the fit I wanted.

Next I used a nibbler, Dremel tool and needle files to make the cutouts for the knobs at the lower left corner of the altimeter and course deviation indicator.

Today I trial fit the instrument panel in the fuselage, and attacked the problem of moving a main power feeder cable that supplies power to the main bus fuseblock. The feeder line was going to interfere with the back end of the GNS-430 rack. I was fortunate to find that I had enough slack in the feed that I could "simply" reposition it a bit to remove slack in one area to create some extra length so I could reroute it around the avionics rack. The concept was simple enough, but the cable was attached to the forward part of the left landing gear box with an Adel clamp. The nut securing the clamp was inside the landing gear box, which really complicated things. I finally managed to get the job done by crawling into the forward fuselage.