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)
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).
Here are the cables mostly dressed out and secured. Hopefully this will pass muster when I get everyone to look at it.
Also went through and tie wrapped all the wiring that hadn't been secured yet.
Ran the EGT and CHT wiring vertically down the mount and secured it with a couple of Adel clamps.
Some of the ground wires and other leads that run back to the VPX on the left side.
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.
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.
Same thing on the left side.
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.
Also drilled the #6 holes in the T rail at the back so I could secure it tightly while working on the skirts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tied to the J stringers. I did all this before I riveted it because I knew it would be a bear to do later.
Doubler plate and antenna installed. It uses a standard BNC connector and is just a simple whip antenna.
Antenna installed. Once we did the aft deck I removed the plastic, scuffed the aluminum for a good ground plane and final installed it.
