Wired trim relays
Adele was over at her grandma’s house, Julie was working late, and I already walked the dog. That all adds up to quality shop time.
My order from Vans arrived with various little things I’ve been waiting for. I installed the parking brake valve with the long screws I ordered and connected the flexible line between the valve and the pilot brakes. The cockpit side of the brake system is now done including co-pilot brakes and parking brake.
I also received some fittings that I needed for the transducer manifold. I installed those with some teflon paste (oil pressure) and EZ-lube (fuel pressure) and temporarily bolted it to the firewall. I still need to rivet the upper ribs to the firewall, so I’ll have to remove it eventually.
I then turned to the trim wiring. After spending tons of time thinking about this, I finally came up with a plan on wiring it all together. The first step was to attach DB-9 connectors to the relays. These connectors are very cool. I slipped some shrink-wrap over the wires, stripped off 1/4 from the end of each, and then crimped on the sockets. I heated up the shrink-wrap over the end of the sockets to act as a stress relief and then slipped the sockets into the connector body, writing down which wire was in which hole. The final step was to shrink the wrap around the whole bundle. It took a bit of time, but looks very professional and sturdy.
I spent a bit more time thinking about the other components of the trim system. The trim is definitely the most complicated system on the plane outside of the avionics. I’m starting to wish I had just gone with manual trim.