6 hours.<\/p>\n
I know there’s been a dearth of pictures lately, but there isn’t a whole lot to shoot. \u00a0 Mostly I’ve been cleaning up wiring. \u00a0 Today is a win, though. \u00a0The ELT has been a ratbastard since I first clicked ‘Add To Cart’ at ACS in March. \u00a0After the interminable wait, I was presented with the need to run a 4-pin phone cable along my central wire bundle. \u00a0 A cheesy phone cable is not the first thing I’d pick to run the remote head of a potentially life-saving device, but it’s not my call, I didn’t design it. \u00a0 This phone cable connects to an audio annunciator, and from that, another cable goes to the panel-mount remote control, which lets you fire off the ELT through blood-fogged vision if it hasn’t gone off from impact and you need help Right Now. \u00a0 Today’s important lesson: Use the right tool for the job. \u00a0Well, no shit, but the thought of paying $40 for a tool I’d use on this project exactly once galled me, so I didn’t buy the phone line connector crimp tool. \u00a0I should have. \u00a0I spent a good while debugging why switching the ELT to ‘ARMED’ produced no beep. \u00a0First thing was that there was no battery in the audio module. \u00a0This required a CR2-type lithium battery, which the Radio Shack down the street had, thankfully. \u00a0 The other thing was that without the crimp tool, the connector on the phone cable didn’t exactly work right. \u00a0 No beep, no nothing. \u00a0 I had already made one run to the Shack for the battery. \u00a0Now I had to make another. \u00a0 But then I remembered I needed a 3.5mm mini plug extension so I could test the music input. \u00a0 With products in hand, I went home and got back to it. \u00a0Sure enough, my crap connector job on the ELT cable was the problem, so with the connector installed properly and the battery in place, switching the ELT to ‘ARMED’ gave a satisfying beep.<\/p>\n
Before I went my 10 rounds with the ELT, I’d soldered the 3.5mm snap-in CALRAD jack to the Music 1 cable, making sure to stress-relieve it with shrink tubing. \u00a0 Once I had my 3.5mm cable, I was able to hear my iPod playing back Geomatic’s “Bliss” just fine. \u00a0 Some adjustment may be necessary to increase the volume on the audio panel, but that shouldn’t be a big deal. \u00a0 The level is also regulated properly by the audio panel. \u00a0When a radio transmission comes in, the music mutes, then comes back up after the transmission is completed. \u00a0The only thing that bums me out about the GMA340 is that I don’t have a music on\/off switch, which means I’ll have to pull the plug if I want the music to just plain go away. \u00a0 Fiddling with an iPod in flight is not a good idea.<\/p>\n
So yeah, today’s a win. \u00a0 Tomorrow, I need to think about mounting the comm antenna, running the comm wire, and putting my floor back together. \u00a0Then when all this avionics BS is done, I can put my flap actuation system and control arms back in. \u00a0 Maybe even seats! \u00a0 Then it’s on to the wonderful land of Firewall Forward, but not before a hellacious shop cleaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
6 hours. I know there’s been a dearth of pictures lately, but there isn’t a whole lot to shoot. \u00a0 Mostly I’ve been cleaning up wiring. \u00a0 Today is a win, though. \u00a0The ELT has been a ratbastard since I first clicked ‘Add To Cart’ at ACS in March. \u00a0After the interminable wait, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[3,6,8],"tags":[19,49,46],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjohn.openbar.com\/airplane\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}