This weekend has been pretty much exclusively dedicated to getting the wiring harness installed in the plane. I have spent at least 16 hours running wires, scratching my head, re-running wires, removing connectors, re-installing connectors, shortening wires, and even had to replace one that was too short. I will say that I am learning a ton about avionics and associated wiring. The class I took last fall only scratched the surface of what I needed to know to interconnect all of these devices. However I am still enjoying the heck out of it and even though I gave up early tonight a little frustrated with a pin that would not come out, I am glad I am doing it this way. I have found a few errors in the plans that I was given and I wrote an email to Jon and Stein at SteinAir letting them know the problems. All minor things like a couple of mislabeled wire colors, one incorrect pin-out location (so far), and what I think may be an issue with the wrong wire size used on a DSUB HD connector that goes into the GNS-400. I say "may" because it is entirely possible that what I found is the correct way to wire the pin up. That's part of the reason I emailed SteinAir, they do excellent work and I am VERY happy with what I got from them.
So after a weekend of work on the wiring it still looks like a spaghetti factory but its starting to come together. One more thing, I got a little help from Mariah and mounted the canopy for the first time. I have some more work to do on the canopy frame before I glue it all together.
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| I did get the Comm installed in its permanent location. I added a label to the front of the comm because its not very clear how to get to the screws that hold it in and I may not remember next time I open this up and need to remove it. |
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| One of the more exciting accomplishments this weekend was the installation of the GDU-460 display unit. Still not powered up but at least the panel is cut and the nut plates are installed. |
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| Here is a picture of the canopy sitting on the air-frame. It moves back and forth ok but the front needs to be narrowed a bit and the aft section needs to spread out a little. |
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| I had to remove the white wire because it was about 2 feet too long and was twisted up in another portion of the harness that was not related to where this was going. So I pulled the wire and re-routed it correctly, and now I am waiting on some HD DSub pins so I can trim it to the proper length. |
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| Remember that spaghetti farm I mentioned...well here it is. And this isn't even close to all of the wires that I am going to have to add to this area. All of the engine monitoring wires come into the bay on the left. |
