6 hours.
That six hours includes both avionics wiring and mounting the phone/mic jack tabs to the bottom of the panel. The day didn’t start out so great. I’m missing a tool and some wire. The tool is a Daniels K42 positioner. It clips into the AFM8 crimper so that when a wire with a d-sub pin on the end is inserted, it crimps at exactly the right place. I have the K13-1, which is great for standard density d-sub pins, but everything in on the GNS430W and the audio panel are high density d-sub connectors. These puppies are spendy, I can tell you that. Little device about the size of a lug nut will run you $65 new from SteinAir. I found one used on crimptools.com for $25. Hopefully it’s not trashed.
The wire is 2-conductor shielded 22 gauge. This runs all over the place connecting audio from and to various devices. I have some single-conductor left over from the mag wiring, and I have some 3-conductor I bought a long time ago, but no 2-conductor anywhere.
I did manage to get aircraft power and aircraft ground wired into the COM connector. One’s for transmit, one’s for receive, I guess.
At that point, I figured I was done wiring, so I trimmed and painted my panel extension tabs for the mic and phone jacks.
They actually look OK. I noticed that from the side, you can see the wiring tabs on the backside, but there will be black shrinkwrap tubing wrapped around them, so you won’t really notice.
Both sides seem OK.
Then I threw on the Synthpop/Futurepop stream on di.fm and started going over the 430W installation manual. Handily enough, there’s a diagram in the back, page H-4, I believe, that shows the interconnects between the 430W and the GMA340 audio panel.
The Mic audio connection uses a 3-conductor shielded wire, so I was able to wire the 430W end of that.
This’ll probably be my last entry for a few days. Going to MI to see my dad. When I get back from my trip, my K42 and my 2 conductor cable should be here, so I’ll be able to finish the harness and plug it all in. Then we see if I can catch tower and ground at SMO on my newly installed stack.
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