Sunday, May 15th, 2016 panel, parking brake, finish fwd, cowling, misc

I've put off posting since I had no way of linking pictures in now that Google has finally shot Picasa in the head and linking from Google Photos is just way too painful.

Finally decided to give SmugMug a rip. We'll see how that goes.

 I'm going to try to organize tage his a bit differently and put things by subject rather that chronologically.

I originally planned to go completely per plans and not have a parking brake.  After some consideration of some fields I've been into and talking to folks I realized there are some spots where stopping just wouldn't be an option without a parking brake.  Steve Solomon gave me an idea about how he mounted his - I realized I could just remove the stock Van's bracket and put another in it's place that would make the whole thing pretty seamless, so I decided to do that.

Just for grins I dug up the picture of when I was just getting started on the firewall.  Here's the image:

From Fuselage

The brake bracket is on the lower left.

The Matco unit I got from Aircraft Spruce is pretty compact.  The most logical mounting for me (and with the best fluid line routing) is where the brake side is down, the actuator lever is on the right (facing forward) and the input side from the master cylinders is on top.

The position of the lever determines when the valve is closed and the brakes are locked on.  The way the unit is made you can close the valve, then apply the brakes.  There is a one way valve that will pressurize the brakes but will not release the pressure until the valve is opened again.  The required angle is about 90 degrees or so.

I tried making a side bracket from 1/2" angle to do that.

The final mount looked like this (first attempt):



It was very sturdy and the angle worked great, but there were some position problems - I didn't like how closely I could get the pedals to the bracket.  I couldn't hit it, but it was very close and was unnecessarily beefy.

As happens a lot of times, I decided to take a detour to mount the rudder and connect it up so I could be sure where the pedals would fall in the forward most holes, and as part of that I decided to fabricate and install the stops so I could get the dimensions correct.

That lead to try two (after some googling and Steve Solomon sent me a pic of his)

Version two features a single stop/cable support on the inboard side and a much narrower mount.

Here's the stop/bracket before riveting. The way it works is the part with the rivet holes mounts to the bracket so the longer "arm" is perpendicular to the firewall and provides a place to secure the cable with an adel clamp. The arm also serves as a stop to the actuator lever so it doesn't open too far and go over center. I decided there was no need to have a stop on the closed side because the cable couldn't move that far anyway.




The components after bending in my cheap Harbor Freight brake and before assembly.  I had a bunch of fittings I tried before settling on  a 45 and a 90 on the bottom.




I was able to use most of the holes from the previous mount.  I had to make a couple of more holes and had to fill 2 holes with rivets.

Nut plates on the backside allow mounting the valve with AN3 bolts.




Here's the mount with the valve installed.  The height of the mount allows the lines from the two brake cylinders to clear the angle on the firewall with just straight fittings on top of the valve.




Just used a plain old ACS friction cable for the brake.  The only downside to the way it mounted is pulling on the knob opens the valve and pushing it closes the valve and sets the brake.  It's backwards from what you would expect, but since it is tucked away there is no way to accidentally actuate it and there will be clear labels to make sure it's obvious which way it works.




Mounting the Dynon GPS 250.

I had originally planned to mount the Dynon GPS unit on the glare shield under the canopy.  After thinking about it I just decided to mount it under the cowl.  Fiberglass is transparent to GPS signals.

Here's the mounting.  Two pieces of 1/2" angle back to back with a hole in the middle, then two #14 Adel clamps to hold it on the engine mount.  Very simple and rock solid.



Side view.




We had a project visit in early April and Pete Pearson (very experienced builder who is one of our Chapter Tech Counselors) came out and was kind enough to go over everything and give me tips.  He's just recently flown off the hours on his RV-9A and is also working on a Sonex Onex.  I think the Onex will be his 10th project. :)

He said everyone he knows has cracking at the oil cooler mounting behind #4 cylinder, regardless of the model (-7, -8, -9, -6  they all do it).  He suggested adding additional reinforcement.  Here's my solution:

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.

From Finish Kit 3

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

Wed, Feb 17 2016 - Quick update

Things have been just crazy busy so I haven't had time to do an update even though I've been pushing pretty hard on the project.

Big milestone Sunday night: I had nearly all the wiring done and all but 2 of my antennas (transponder and comm 2 aren't done yet - need more coax).  I tested connections and wiring until I was sick of it, and finally decided late Sunday to bite the bullet and power the system up.  I double checked the VPX programming by powering it alone up with a laptop, then installed it, connected by DC power supply to the VPX and main ground block, and turned it all on.

To my immense relief, everything worked.

Skyview came right up.

From Finish Kit 2

This evening I updated the firmware and system software to 14.0, then set about configuring all the various devices (GPS, SL40, ADS/B, etc).

I don't have a VPX license yet - should get that tomorrow, so I can't see the VPX interface and check all that out.  I also should get the data card for the GPS tomorrow, so I can install a single NavData update to make sure that works.  I followed the instructions in the Dynon manual for the 430/530, and even though mine is a 400, it seems to work exactly the same.

When the test screen comes up on the GPS, the HSI needles move appropriately and Skyview is clearly receiving test data from the Garmin.

Once the serial port for the SL40 was configured the Skyview immediately knew both active and standby freqs for that, so that's working.  I need to set the radio up to allow frequency push from the airport data pages to make that work.

I also turned on the ADS/B interface and that is clearly talking, although in the garage none of the data antennas (GPS or ADS/B) are working.  I can pick up center traffic on the SL40 no problem, so that's working great.

The audio interfaces to the audio panel also work, including audio alerts from the Skyview.  Temp sensor appears to be correct, as do the CHT sensors that are all hooked up.  They are slightly colder than the air temp since I had the heater on - CHTs read 57 while the air temp in the tail read 62.  Bang on.

Remote compass for the D10 is also working, as well as the GPS input data being fed to it by the Garmin (when in test mode).

I strung the Dynon GPS out the door and was able to get position immediately, so that's working.  I'll have to try to rig up an extension for the Garmin GPS antenna so I can get it outside to make sure I'm getting good signal on that.

There are still some things that need to be sorted out - I think the remote compass for the D10 is near some sort of interference because it's about 40 degrees out.  I moved it around and it's definitely working, so I just need to get it clear of any interference and calibrate it properly.  Same holds true for the Skyview ADAHRS.

I also need to power up the transponder and make sure it's working ok.  I didn't want to power it up with no antenna.  Same for the ICOM A210.  Should be able to do that later this week.

Very happy camper at this point.