Headrest fitting

Making up the small alloy brackets for this ahead of riveting them in place and then drilling and riveting in to support in place. The TLAC supplied leather headrest will be fitted to a small wooden panel that will be hinged (If I can locate a small gauge piano hinge). This will give access to the headrest storage area (has a bottom ply base).

I still need to source a suitable Ariel for the planned Icom units and, from speaking to Alistair on the TLAC open day, this requires a metal under piece to ensure good polar reception (I think that’s what he said ! – so will ask where he got it from)

(update Oct 2019) prompted to update this post as I see someone had read it recently …

Anyway .. didn’t opt for the Ariel in the headrest ..placed it on top of the centre overhead cabane .. with a super ground plane in place .. see the associated blog page …

Also .. I made a tiny alteration to the standard headrest .. I epoxied and fibreglassed a 1mm plywood base onto the headrest unit… then cut an access hole in the front … keeping about 5cm around the edge to allow good location and anchor points for the headrest popper studs. This now provides a neat easy access storage unit that can hold the aircraft papers and certificates (mandatory for some French airfields) as well as a small socket set, cable ties, pliers and OF COURSE some gaffa tape 😉