« Archives in May, 2011

Get on the stick.

May 16, 2011 / posted in Electrical / No Comments

3 hours.

Got one stick grip installed, completely misdrilled the passenger stick though, so had to order a new one. Some days I just suck at this. I also pulled out the EFIS and boxed it up for its trip to MGL, where they’ll hopefully be able to return it to full functionality. I wired the LED warning light in the panel as well. Next is the process of how to do the stick wiring. I need to purchase the flap and trim relay from Infinity. The Ray Allen relay decks I have are too bulky and don’t do flaps. I also have to mount the terminal blocks and figure out a way to bring in the flap wiring from the panel. This electrical stuff is hard.

I’m also in the build-or-buy trap with the avionics harnesses. I need to call Approach Systems tomorrow and get a quote from them for a harness that integrates my 430W and audio panel. The rest I think I can handle.

Fun while it lasted.

May 11, 2011 / posted in Electrical, Panel / No Comments

2 hours.

Yay. Another week, another gout attack. And tonight, my EFIS decided to go funny on me. More on that later. Before my knee flared up again, I got the panel painted, in textured black Rustoleum, which looks very nice indeed. I’m rather pleased with how it came out. This is after I cut the holes for the MGL AH2 and the Falcon compass. I reinstalled the panel, added the new instruments and hooked the EFIS back up. It now does this weird thing where large horizontal bars show noise in the blue channel across the screen. Major, major suckage. I now have to de-ass the EFIS and take it back down to MGL in Torrance, where hopefully they can fix it. I hope it’s not something stupid like an aluminum chip on a board somewhere. I think it would just pack up and die if that were the case though.

Tonight, I ran the load wires from the panel to the left and right landing lights and the pitot heat. Why am I doing pitot heat again? Oh yeah. I want to fly IFR in this thing. There are still a million things to do, electrically speaking, but I did order my terminal blocks and audio jacks. While I was chairbound this weekend, I also stripped off the blue outer sheath on the Infinity grips and combined all the ground wires into one, which reduces the thickness of the stick wiring bundle considerably. This is a good thing. Now I don’t have to drill a vast 5/8″ hole in the stick to egress the wires out to where they’ll go to the terminal blocks. A big hole in the control stick may or may not be a bad idea. Van’s doesn’t recommend drilling the stick because it weakens the tubing, especially if the hole is near the pivot. But lots of guys have done it and they’ve not broken a control stick off yet.

Yet another wiring post

May 1, 2011 / posted in Electrical / No Comments

6 hours.

That’s counting yesterday and today, including the suckage that is running errands in Los Angeles on a Saturday morning. I had to pick up some stuff to effect some home repair, then I had to run to Fry’s for a few electrical bits. Splain me something. Why is 2 1/4″ the ONLY size hole saw Home Depot doesn’t carry? I went to two hardware stores looking for a 2 1/4″ hole saw to make the cutout for the Falcon magnetic compass. Neither had it, so I’m going to put that off until later, so I tucked back into the wiring. What I wound up doing was ripping out the whole bundle that runs along the central tunnel, because I changed which side the wires emerge on. I had them coming out of the left side of the tunnel cover, but they interfere with the boost pump plumbing. I had to re-route the antenna wiring as well, since there’s no chance in hell I’m going to get 4 coaxials, 3 servo cables, and a multitude of power wires through a 5/8″ snap bushing. The antenna wires now run up the left side through some conduit, which I can hopefully bury under the Classic Aero side panel. Of course, this generated another problem: The pitot and AoA lines weren’t going to fit through a snap bushing with a bunch of antenna cables either, and I’m not about to punch new holes in the spar. Not only that, it’s going to be interesting enough getting everything past the fuel lines without chafing.

I figured out what to do; run the AoA and pitot lines aft, up through a hole in the seat pan, through the armrest, and along the same route as the static lines. Done. No extra holes. After that it was all about the wire bundle. Here’s the list:

strobe power
tail nav light
flap wires
AHRS/magnetometer power
pitch servo cable
roll servo cable
pax-enable wire
AHRS/magnetometer data
boost pump power
boost pump ground (yes I know I can ground it locally, but the ground strip is right there on the firewall)
nav light power 2x
landing light power 2x
These are now run, connected, and cable-managed, with the exception of the nav and landing lights. They’re next, as soon as my 16ga wire comes in from ACS.