Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

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.

Continuing to hook up the switches from left to right, I wired up the fuel pump and strobe switches. It’s a little tight under the transponder, but not impossible. In retrospect I should have put the stack about 1/4″ higher up, but was worried about interference with the canopy structure. It’s working out OK so far.

I figured out where I wanted to mount the little boxes (dimmer, landing light flasher, capacitive fuel proble converters) on the shelf, drilled holes, and mounted them in place. The shelf is now full, but not uncomfortably so. It’s all looking very organized (at least to me).

Thanks to Scott Card, I was able to implement the landing lights as I originally had planned, and I won’t need a new switch. I just need to order a diode rectifier from B&C. His idea is going to work out great, allowing the 3-position switch to be off/flash/both. I wired up the switch and flasher and will add the diode to my next B&C order.

Still suffering from a cold, but did a bit of work on the plane between naps. I finished hooking up the power and ground for the flaps. I need to figure out wire routing inside the flap housing before I can finish that end of it.

The only thing left to hook up on the transponder was the antenna. I only needed to crimp on a BNC connector as I ran the wire quite a while ago. I powered it up and made sure it was in standby mode. I certainly don’t want it to start pinging, especially without altitude info. I live under Sea-Tac’s class B airspace and within class D airspace for Renton. I went through the set up menus and changed a few minor things. It seems to be working correctly.

I also pondered a bit on how to hook up the landing light switch. I wanted it to be a 3-position switch, off/flash/both. However, I can’t figure out any way to make that work. The wiring diagram for the CreativAir flasher shows a 3-position switch, flash/off/both. I’ll have to do that, but will need to order a 2-1 switch from B&C. I need to place another order with them eventually, as I’m sure I’ll need more coax and probably 14g wire to run out to the landing lights in the wings.

While I was on CreativAir’s web site, I noticed they’re working on some new wing tip HID lights. Oh, that’s tempting. I’ve never been crazy about making the big holes in the leading edges for the Duckworks, but wasn’t sure the regular wing tip lights provided enough illumination. The new lights are expensive, but look pretty cool.

Despite not feeling well from a cold, I had quite a bit of time for the project tonight. I finished up some wiring under the seats, hooking up the pilot push-to-talk button on the stick. I also fixed two of the trim relay connectors. Tested both, and they are working great.

I’m working on the switches from left to right, so the next two were the pitot tube and autopilot. I hooked up power and ground for both. I don’t have the roll servo installed yet (wings not mounted yet), but I plugged it in just to make sure it’s moving correctly. I powered up the autopilot, checked the settings, and engaged it. It worked! I tested changing the direction left and right. The roll servo was moving in the opposite direction, so I swapped the two wires. Next I engaged the altitude and pushed down on the tail. Sure enough, it tried to push the stick forward a tiny bit. Perfect!!

Julie took Adele to her first clarinet band session, so I had some extra time. I started working on the flaps. I installed the motor that I fitted so many months ago. It’s amazing how one stupid washer can take 1/2 hour to install. Once the motor was in, I routed wires around and hooked them up to the switch. I ran out of time, but temporarily hooked up power and ground and tested them. Also worked!

So far, the electrical has been pretty easy and works on the first try. I guess the careful planning is paying off.

It’s been a long spell of no work on the plane. My parents were in town for a few days from Arizona, so we’ve been doing a lot of visiting and entertaining. That plus the start of school stuff, and soccer, and… I found a few minutes here and there to tinker, but nothing really got done.

My parents left early Sunday, and I spent most of the day on the plane. I hooked up the powers and grounds for all of the avionics. I then spent considerable time debating about the location of the jacks. I put in the seat and side panel on one side, and verified that the recessed jack housing is going to work great. I drilled a small hole in the seat pan and fed the wires up through there.

I also soldered up the headphone and mic jacks. I did a lot of double and triple checking to make sure everything was correct. It sure would be nice if the jacks had fast-on tabs. Soldering the wires on there is unpleasant. Of course I forgot heat shrink on one wire. I’m not going to redo it until (if) it breaks. I attached a couple of 22 AWG wires to the correct tabs of the mic jack to run to the pilot stick. I’m still trying to figure out where to put the copilot PTT button. I didn’t put it on the stick, as I want the stick to be easily removable.

One thing that took some extra time was I cut about a foot off each headphone/mic wire, because they were a little too long. In retrospect, it would have been better to just wind up the extra somewhere. Stark had them nicely prepped for wiring. Stripping the outer sheath without nicking the wires was tricky, and then there’s the shielding to cut back, etc. It took more time than I expected.

With all that hooked up, it was time to test the PS Engineering PMA8000B audio panel and Garmin SL40. I put in fuses for those two items, slid them into the stack, and flipped the master and avionics switches. No smoke!! I turned on both units and was able to pull in RNT, BFI, and SEA ATIS, as well as listen to some chatter at BFI and SEA towers. Of course, I made double sure I wasn’t transmitting accidentally. Very cool. I played with some of the functions of the PMA8000B (recorder playback) and the SL40 (standby monitoring). They are both very nice units. I don’t have the GNS430 yet, so I couldn’t try it out. And the antenna isn’t on the GTX327, so I don’t want to power that up yet. I think the autopilot will be next.

Long day with some very cool results. I put the trickle charger on the battery to top it off again.

The 10 AWG wire from B&C showed up, so I wired the avionics bus via the switch on the panel. Works great. The terminals for the size 10 wire are really, really difficult to crimp. Took 2+ hands to squeeze the crimper handles.

I also broke down and ordered one of B&C’s ground blocks. I knew 24 wasn’t going to be enough, so I went for the 48 tab big boy. The ground block I made had two problems. First the aluminum would eventually oxidize and not conduct as well. Second, the tab blocks from SteinAir don’t have a little hole in them to help retain the Fast-on terminals. The B&C blocks are nice quality, if not a bit over-priced. The tabs have a dimple on them, and they are soldered to the brass base sheet. The really, really fortunate part of the whole thing for me, is that the holes on the B&C ground block were almost exactly the same as the holes I already drilled in the firewall. I just had to enlarge one hole to 5/16″. Took me all of 15 minutes to swap, and now I won’t have to worry about it anymore.

AFS finally posted some new information on the AF-3400/3500 on their web site, although it’s only wiring harness diagrams. Looks just as I expected. Should be easy to hook up once they get here. Speaking of which, it’s about time for my bi-weekly nag call to them. 2 weeks ago they said they’d be shipping the harnesses in 2 weeks. This is starting to get really tiring. I just want to get the stupid engine sensors installed so I can wrap up the firewall forward. I have a feeling that Glasair is taking priority over us loyal customers that have been waiting months for product to arrive. One of the standard panels for Glasair’s “2 weeks to taxi” program on the Sportsman includes AFS screens. I noticed they have some special switch option added to one of the wiring harnesses. I’m about 2 weeks away from cutting a new panel and going back to the Dynon screens.

I picked up some 1″ #6 screws at Lowes and was able to mount the airspeed indicator temporarily. The screws are just barely long enough for the altimeter. I’ll have to use 1-1/4″ screws there. It seems like every single thing in the panel needs a different size mounting screw. At least it’s looking good.

Ran the wire for the Gretz pitot heat display out to the left wing root. The display is just 3 LEDs, green for pitot temp OK, yellow for heating up, red for temp too cold. I’m planning on drilling 3 holes in the panel and mounting the LEDs with some little clips I got at Radio Shack. I also ran some 14 AWG wire out there for the pitot heat power. I’m trying to run all the big wires around so I can determine if I’m going to run out of room in the snap bushings. So far, so good. I’ve been trying to take maximum advantage of the outboard snap bushings in the center spar section.

I also ran some coax to the right side antenna for the SL-40. It’s been a while since I crimped the BNC connector for the transponder, but it’s just like riding a bike. The only hassle was routing the coax around. The thicker the wire, the more hassle it is.

I cleaned up the wiring around the fuse blocks a little more. It’s starting to look much better. Julie inspected my work and approved. I’ve got a bunch more wires to run, but progress has been steady. I think maybe another 2-3 weeks should do it for wiring.