Sunday, March 13, 2016

March 13th, 2016 - aft skin, GPS update, canopy rails, handle and T-rail, left side engine sensors, FWF wiring cleanup and securing

Trying to spend time finishing things up and "closing the door" on some stuff that has been lingering and is finally ready to be completed and buttoned up.

I finished up most of the FWF wiring and installed the EGT sensors on both the left and right side of the engine, hopefully final installed, terminated and tie wrapped those all up for the last time.

Right side (#1 and #3 cylinders)


From Finish Kit 3

EGT sensors installed on the right side.

The recommendation is to stay away from bends and to mount them in a straight run of the exhaust. The problem is that only one of the 4 tubes on my Vetterman exhaust is really straight coming out (unless you get really close to the flange, which I did not want to do).

I ended up installing them about 2 1/4" down from the flange. That was the best compromise for my setup that would be in as straight a run as possible and still put them all at the same distance (important for uniform measurements).


From Finish Kit 3

Here are the cables mostly dressed out and secured. Hopefully this will pass muster when I get everyone to look at it.


From Finish Kit 3

Also went through and tie wrapped all the wiring that hadn't been secured yet.


From Finish Kit 3


Ran the EGT and CHT wiring vertically down the mount and secured it with a couple of Adel clamps.


From Finish Kit 3


Some of the ground wires and other leads that run back to the VPX on the left side.


From Finish Kit 3

Rebecca was home from Spring break this week.  Luckily I was pretty close to being able to nail up the aft skins (finally....).  She helped me do that Thursday evening.  By doing one side and working around the top we were able to back rivet nearly everything, which makes for a really nice look. 


From Finish Kit 3

Once that was done I secured the seat belt anchors to the left and right longerons.  Crummy picture because the light was not that great.  I'll try to do a better one later.

From Finish Kit 3

Same thing on the left side.

From Finish Kit 3

Spent most of Sunday afternoon working on the forward canopy skirts trying to get it to fit well and not hang up.  I think mine must be slightly narrower than most (because of the way I did it obviously) since the bottom of the skin would hit the side and hang things up.  After a couple of hours of file/sand/test/repeat I finally got them to where they do not drag at all and about as good a fit as I could hope for.  I'll drill the frame to the rollers later in the week.

In the meantime I finished up some missing screws in the side rails, then went to work on the handle assembly.

It was mostly done, but I had never drilled the handle since I wasn't quite sure of the final fit height of the frame.  Now that that's been established, this could be done.

From Finish Kit 3

Also drilled the #6 holes in the T rail at the back so I could secure it tightly while working on the skirts.


From Finish Kit 3

I was very disappointed with the drill job I did on the handle.  I started in the drill press, but did just the aluminum bit first, then put it on the plane to get the height right and used the prior hole as a guide to drill the tubing.

I don't know how it happened, but it completely missed the aft hole and ended up canted down and backward toward the tail.  It's not horrible, but it was very disappointing.  I cleaned it up and made it work.

From Finish Kit 3

The other thing I did this week was final mount the ELT and Garmin GPS antennas in the aft turtle deck.

Working on the doubler plate for the GPS antenna.  This will sit just aft of the slider rail so it will have a clear view of the sky even with the canopy wide open.  The ELT is just aft of the second to last bulkhead on the tail.


From Finish Kit 3

Mounted (hopefully for the last time).  I can't get a signal in the garage, but I used a BNC extension to get it outside and picked up a signal no problem, so everything is wired correctly.


From Finish Kit 3

View of the connection and doubler plate from below.  This uses a TNC connector, which screws on rather than push and twist as a BNC does.


From Finish Kit 3

Running the antenna wire for the ELT.  I ran it up the bulkhead, then down the one of the J stringers, then finally to the antenna.


From Finish Kit 3

Tied to the J stringers.  I did all this before I riveted it because I knew it would be a bear to do later.


From Finish Kit 3

Doubler plate and antenna installed.  It uses a standard BNC connector and is just a simple whip antenna.


From Finish Kit 3

Antenna installed.  Once we did the aft deck I removed the plastic, scuffed the aluminum for a good ground plane and final installed it.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Sunday, March 6th 2016 - antennas, electrical, panel, coax, ads/b, cht/egt sensor wiring

Really trying to knock out all the wiring and cabling (especially for the aft section) so I can button up the skins and start working on the windscreen, etc.  I'm hoping to be able to get done or close to done this year.

I was out looking at Nick's Velocity the other day and noticed he'd used a modular terminal block (that AMP doesn't make anymore unfortunately) to tie together all his CHT/EGT wiring on his big bore Continental.  I had been looking at the Faston connectors and how to try to route them and had not come up with a way to do it that didn't involve lots of wiring just doubled up on itself in big masses to take up the slack and secure it reasonably.  I decided to adapt his idea.  When I told him what I was doing he said he'd stolen it from Ed Smith. :)

I ended up making a small vertical plate to attach between the engine mounts, then use nut plates to attach the terminal blog.  A serendipitous side effect was I also needed some sort of mid-run method of securing the plug wiring, and hanging some angle and a nutplate off the right side accomplished that nicely.

Here's the plate as I'm laying it out and drilling it.


From Finish Kit 3

And here it is installed but none of the wires terminated.  I added a piece of angle later so I could attach an adel clamp to hold the lower plug wires for #2 and #4 cyls.


From Finish Kit 3

Running the CHT wires back.

From Finish Kit 3

Wires from the EMS220 monitor box come in on the right.  Wires on the left are CHT and EGT for both left side cylinders.

From Finish Kit 3

Decided it was finally time to rivet the ribs and forward supports.  I have been putting it off thinking I would have to take it apart again, but finally realized it was just holding me up so I just did it.

From Finish Kit 3


From Finish Kit 3

I had to use pulled rivets for some of the outside attachments.  There just wasn't room to drive them.

From Finish Kit 3

Moved on with running the switch wiring.  The VPX system is a bit unique in that the switches carry no actual load at all, they just open and close a ground path.  When the VPX detects a ground it powers the circuit the switch is associated with.  I ended up using good quality switches anyway, but you don't have to if you don't want to.

From Finish Kit 3

I found an ADS/B unit on VAF for a good price and was lucky enough to be able to get it.  Saved about $150 over new.  After flying with Steve Solomon and seeing the ADS/B traffic and weather real time I'm glad I did.  Really is a no brainer with all the traffic we have around here.

From Finish Kit 3
I decided to mount it aft on the right wall using a mount similar to what Van's sells for the strobes that use a power supply.
From Finish Kit 3

Fitting the wall mount.  There's way more clearance than I need to clear the rudder cable.

From Finish Kit 3

Mount fabricated and installed and everything connected up to the Dynon hub and the antenna.

From Finish Kit 3

Antenna is mounted to the belly.  I'll make up a doubler plate later.

From Finish Kit 3

In the middle of all this I got a call from Aerosport Power, where I got my engine.  Turns out someone had run into an issue where the fuel pump pushrod was not properly installed (the "hat" end was upside down) and had experienced a fuel pump failure.  They had an SB to do to check it.  The engine was actually built by Superior, and my serial number matched on of about 20 they had issues the SB for.  I pulled the PMAG, and thankfully my pushrod is installed correctly.  You can see it on the right side of the opening - the "hat" is up against the cam that drives the fuel pump.

Glad to see it's ok.  It would be a lot of work to fix it.  Basically you'd have to remove the accessory housing to flip it around.

From Finish Kit 3

I installed the COMM antenna for the SL40 under the left side baggage floor, which is one of the reasons I made it removable.  I wish I'd made the other removable as well, but it's ok as is.  I had to use a 90 degree adapter to attach the coax.  The silver plate is a doubler.

I'm using the Delta Pop (http://www.deltapopaviation.com ) antennas.  I can easily pick up center and Norfolk Approach traffic even in the garage.  I attached my scanner to it and was picking up traffic as far away as Emporia, so they work really well.

From Finish Kit 3
I ended up using the AMP crimp connectors.  I got the crimp tool from Stein.  After some not so great attempts to crimp the pin with my DSub crimper (I know - that's not what it's for) I finally figured out how to do it properly with the coax crimper and haven't had any more problems.

From Finish Kit 3

Here's the business end of a male BNC connector.

From Finish Kit 3

Crimp tool from Steinair.  The antenna is the Delta Pop transponder antenna that is also recommended by Dynon for their ADS/B unit.  It will go in the belly skin under the ADS/B in the area of the elevator bellcrank.

From Finish Kit 3