3 hours.
Most of them, anyway. Turns out I need a couple of different switches. I need a dual-pole on/off switch for the battery master, because I’m deleting the alternator field enable. The idea with the alternator field enable is that if for some reason your alternator goes blooey and starts up with runaway voltage, you can shut off the field before it zaps all your goodies. This is a throwback to the days when alternators sucked, some time in the early sixties, and the chances of you interrupting the field before your fancy MFD’s and other computerized avionics surge out are next to nil. Modern alternators are usually pretty bulletproof, unless you switch the field on and off while it’s spinning. Doing that can reduce the life of the alternator from thousands of hours to hundreds, so the battery master is going to be a DPST switch that engages the battery master and the alt field simultaneously. I had to order another couple of switches from B and C also: the one from Van’s sucks. It has no keyway or tabbed anti-rotation ring, and it doesn’t even have a hex nut on the panel side. So I ordered a DPDT switch for the flaps. I also brain-farted on my initial layout, and forgot the heated pitot switch. Ran the circuit for it, allotted amperage for it, forgot to put it on the panel. So I needed another SPST on/off switch for that, because the one I had originally for the pitot heat was repurposed for the pax enable switch.
Yesterday was a bit of a milestone. I installed the firewall grounding plate, which is a brass plate with a bunch of fast-on tabs on one side. The other side is in contact with the firewall, and a big 5/16 brass bolt goes through the firewall, where it becomes the attach point for the negative battery cable and the braided strap that connects to the engine block. With this in place, I ran the wires for the master battery switch. For the first time, I connected the positive power lead to the battery. When the battery master switch was turned on, there was a satisfying >clunk< from the firewall, which meant that the master contactor was working. I checked the main and endurance busses and read 12.5 volts on the multimeter. I didn't hook up the starter switches. I'm still puzzling out wiring runs, But I'll get to that soon enough.
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