Tuesday, May 27, 2014

A good weekend of progress

I don't think I could ever spend enough time in the garage but this weekend was a good one.  Being a long weekend I think I got at least 30 hours of time in the garage from Friday afternoon until last night.  Amy was off doing stuff with the kids and I had no other plans so I knocked out a bunch of little tasks.  I am pretty much done with the wiring I can do for now.  My avionics are suppose to arrive late this week and then I will have lots more to do but for now about the only thing I can do is install the tail strobe and elevator trim motor.  However, since it is suppose to be in the upper 70's to 80's this weekend I have changed gears again and started prepping for the canopy work.  I'm nervous and excited about completing another major mile stone.

I managed to get the co-pilot stick installed and wired up to the rest of the system.  The co-pilot stick has all the functions of the pilot stick but is removable hence the DB-9 connection point I have tie-wrapped to the stick.  The stick does have a very slight amount of play in it that I am going to have to address.

I finally got around to fabricating and installing the copper bars that connect the Master relay with the Starter relay and ANL fuse and then from the ANL fuse to the shunt above it.  As you can see in this picture the shunt was just installed yesterday as well.  The shunt will allow me to see how many amps my alternator is putting out in total.  The VPX will show me how many amps it is pushing but that does not include the battery bus which bypasses the VPX.   The copper bars took a bit of time to fabricate because its actually two pieces of copper per connection and they had to be twisted and adjusted to make the bends.  After fitting I then covered the exposed parts of the bar with black heat-shrink to hopefully prevent any inadvertent shorts.

I was able to finish up the pig-tail that connects the flap switch and the aux fuel pump switch that are installed in the center console.  The console needs to be removable so I used a DB-9 connector to create the wire separation point.  You can see the connection point on the center console in the following picture.

Here is the pig-tail installed in the center console.  In this picture we are actually looking up at the bottom of the center console.  

And finally in this picture I have highlighted the connection point from behind the panel.  Here we are actually looking from forward to aft  (the removable instrument panels are not installed)

As I mentioned above its time to start working the canopy again so I was able to measure and drill the rail that the aft part of the canopy runs down as you slide it back.  With that in place I can begin work on the plexiglass itself.  I also spent an hour or two doing some final tweaks to the canopy frame to make sure its right where I want it.  I have about 30 minutes more of work before I will call it good enough.