Between Adele’s soccer game and a general lack of motivation, I didn’t spend much time on the plane. I hooked up the ignition wires to the P-mags which I previously started on. I also installed the neat little baffle grommets and special wire clamps on the bottom valve cover screws. I still need to figure out routing a little bit, but it’s looking good.
Since the P-mags are installed again, I hooked up the power, ground, and enable wires to them. I ran the ground wires to a stud on the (unused) vacuum pad. I also hooked up a 2-conductor shielded wire I bought from Spruce to the control lines. These can be hooked up to a serial port on a computer to change the amount of timing advance. For now, I’m planning on just hooking the wires to each other in the cockpit, which selects a conservative advance.
I also installed a stereo mini jack from Radio Shack in the bottom flange of the panel and hooked it up to the music input of the PMA-8000B. I plugged in my iPod and it worked perfectly. The music mutes during activity on the active frequency, unless the “Mute” button is pushed. The music jack is automatically grounded at the panel, which is not ideal. If I run into problems with it, I’ll swap it out.
The Gretz pitot tube has a little indicator module that displays green for “temp OK”, yellow for “pitot heat on”, and red for “temp low”. The control module cycles the pitot heat on and off to keep it just warm enough to prevent icing. I marked out the location of the holes so the middle LED would line up with the switches. I was going to make the holes 1/4″ apart, but then figured that was too close for the LED holders that I picked up at Radio Shack. Instead I put them 11/32″ apart. I carefully drilled out the holes making sure they stayed lined up and equally spaced apart. It ended up looking great.
Of course I had to temporarily hook up the pitot tube to make sure it all worked. Flipped the switch and the two bottom LEDs turned on. The tip of the pitot heated up very quickly. After about 10 seconds, the middle LED went out indicated the heater turned off. Perfect-o.
The final item for the night was drilling a hole for the alternator feed circuit breaker just to the right of the middle bank of switches. I mounted it, but need a few parts from B&C in order to hook it up.
Time for a status shot of the panel. This is everything but the AFS units (paper ones in place for this shot), the GNS-430 (waiting for the WAAS unit), and a few control knobs (parking brake, cabin heat, and alternate air). It’s looking pretty good. Just about time to ship it off to the power coater.
Finished wiring up the trim switch on the panel. According to the wiring diagrams from Ray Allen, two diodes are needed on the standard trim switch in order to use it with a relay. I soldered the diodes inline and covered them with heat shrink. I then connected up the switch using a Microfit connector. I don’t have the elevator installed. I can’t even get to it at the moment. Instead I hooked up a voltmeter to the elevator trim motor lines and had Adele watch the display while I moved the stick and panel switches. I need to turn the panel switch upside down, but it otherwise worked perfectly.
Next up was the power outlet. I’m using the same scheme as Walter Tondu. I’m using a small outlet in the bottom flange of the panel. I’ll make an adapter for the standard cigarette lighter outlet, and probably modify the power cords of stuff I’ll use often like the iPod. The case of the outlet is already connected to the shell of the connector, so I used that for ground and connected the pin to the main fuse panel via 16 AWG. That should easily handle any load up to 15A. Picture is kinda dark, but you get the idea.
Time to order a few more parts from B&C. I just about have the wiring wrapped up until the wings are on or the EFIS/EMS harness is available. I also worked on the paperwork for registering the plane. It’s about time to send that in.
I got home a little early and painted the covers while the sun was still up. Hopefully that’s the last of the painting, but I’m sure there will be at least one more item.
Back to the panel, I installed the elevator trim switch in the panel. It’s basically a back-up and way for the co-pilot to control elevator trim. I figure aileron trim isn’t nearly as critical as elevator trim, so I have just the one switch on the panel.
Once that was installed, I started the wiring for the trim/stick behind the panel. I have two of the Ray Allen wire bundles coming to the panel from the stick carrying the indicator lines, A/P switch on the stick, and power and ground for the trim. I hooked up the power and ground and A/P switch and tested them. It all works. Looks like a bit of a mess, but once it’s all tie-wrapped it’ll look great.
I hooked up the carbon monoxide detector and powered it up. Works great. I put it on the avionics bus, mainly because I don’t want it on while trying to crank the engine and it doesn’t have an on/off switch. There’s a little fan in the back of it that sucks air through the device. It has two wires that can be used to trip an external alarm. I might try hooking that up to the AF-3400 engine monitor. We’ll see. It beeps as well, but it’s not super loud.
The long list of stuff left is so daunting that I made up a short list of stuff to do this week and next. At the top of the list was painting the few remaining interior covers before our weather heads south. I pulled out the front center cover and realized I never bent the heat louvers. Using a couple pieces of angle and some clamps, it went pretty smoothly. I probably agonized over it more the past two years than it actually took to do it.
I smoothed the edges and then scuffed and cleaned it up along with the two seat pan covers and the lower baggage area cover. Ready for painting tomorrow.
Didn’t do much on the plane today as we had a BBQ at Jim’s house for the EAA 1440 Eastside chapter. And we are now officially a chapter as of this week!! The weather was absolutely perfect, and we all had a great time getting together for some tasty food and lots of plane talk.
I did manage to hook up the wire for the ELT remote. This may be the only specialty tool that I didn’t have to buy special for the plane. I already had it for some phone and network wiring I did in the past. It basically just puts a modular plug on the end of a wire, which is what the ELT remote uses.
And here the wire is installed. The unit below is the CO detector, which I haven’t hooked up yet.
I finished up the nav lights from yesterday and finalized the connection to the flaps, although I’m still not happy with it. The wires are rubbing on the flap weldment as it moves. I need to add some heat shrink or something there.
I also mounted the ELT remote and CO detector in the panel. Ross cut the main holes for the units, but not the mounting holes. I marked the locations very carefully and then started with a #40 drill bit. Worked out great.
I called Advanced Flight Systems on the way home from work to ask about the status of getting a wiring harness and the EFIS and EMS screens. They’re getting close to sending out the harnesses, and I’m close to the top of the list. Hopefully I’ll see the harness or at least the engine sensors in the next couple of weeks. I didn’t get any time promises for the screens, although they’re apparently ready to start building them. They’ve sent a few systems to Glasair (as I suspected) and Van for his personal plane. I can’t worry about when I’m going to receive the screens. I’ll keep calling every few weeks and asking, but they’ll get here when they get here. It would be unfortunate if the project gets held up waiting, but it’s not the end of the world. I just really hope it all fits as planned and is easy to wire up.
The P-mags arrived back from having their firmware updated. I re-installed them on the engine hopefully for the last time. With the new feature of being able to time them by just blowing into the manifold pressure sensor, I shouldn’t have to move them again.
I finished up the dimmer installation from yesterday and started working on the nav light wiring. I decided to use local grounds for the nav lights and use just a butt splice in the center tunnel to branch out to the wings and aft light.
I wired up the LC-40 dimmer, which took longer than I expected. I hooked up a ground wire and power via the nav light switch. I then made a backing plate for the dimmer controls. They have a tab similar to the switches.
The unit came with some 6-conductor wire for the controls, so I soldered that to the tabs. It was a little challenging, but not too bad.
The routed the other end to the LC-40 and hooked it up. And finally I hooked up the Nulites and backlighting for the PMA-8000B. I put them on different controls just for testing. I’ll eventually put them on one and the panel floods on the second control. I powered it up, and it worked perfectly. (The “fill” label is for a mounting hole that is pre-drilled in the panel, but I’m not going to use. I’m just going to fill it with JB Weld prior to painting.)
Today’s session put me officially over the 1800 hour mark on the project. Way back when, I estimated the project would take about 1800 hours. Working 50 hours a month on average meant a completion date in Sept 2006. Well, I’m right on the mark for 50 hours/month, but the project is going to take a little longer than 1800 hours. I’m still not entirely sure how much work time is left, but I expect it’s 100-200 hours worth. I’ve been telling everybody it’ll be done in December, but it might be January. It all depends on how long it takes to do the hundred little things at the end. Luckily, the wiring has been going really smoothly.