Stjohn's RV-7

5.5 hours.

4AWG and 6AWG wire suck to work with. Period. They don’t bend easily, and when they bend, they don’t stay bent until they’ve been bent that way for a while. But I got the main and e-bus fuse blocks mounted on the subpanel, facing forward, and I can actually get to the fuses in flight.

The main bus. The actual mounting is a bit higher, with the feed post at the bottom. It’s all about where the wires get run.

The e-bus fuse block. This feeds the avionics and EFIS. In case the alternator tanks, there’s an alternate feed to this that comes directly off the battery.

After this was the fun of getting the fat 6AWG wire to the main bus in such a way that it doesn’t chafe on anything. The last thing I want is a wire rubbed raw and arcing against the airframe. Along with this wire, I ran the starter contactor load wire and e-bus feed, as well as the master battery contactor load wire. At this point, I’m stuck. I can finish prettying up the wires in back and start sussing out where and how I’m going to run flap and trim wires from the sticks, but at this point, I’ve done all I can do before the next shipment of electrical bits shows up. I didn’t even know what bits I needed until today. I didn’t know it was OK to put more than one wire into the shank of a PIDG ring terminal. But today, I also finished my panel layout, for the most part. That means I know where the major components and switches are going to go. I really have no idea where to put music input and aux power, but I’ll get to that momentarily.

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