The engine is hung!

Fast and Furious is the best way to describe the pace of major updates in the build process.  Its only been a little over a week (ok, maybe two) since getting her up on her gear and now there has been another big milestone!  The engine is hung!

I've spent the past several work sessions trying to get the firewall as complete as possible because once the engine is hung access is severely restricted.  I managed to get everything that I could think of done but I guarantee you that I forgot something that will cause me endless cursing before this thing flies!  

Last Friday I took the day off and Amy and I drove to Oregon to pick up my engine from Jim at Premier Aircraft Engines.  Talk about great work!  This engine looks great and Jim and his team went over and above to make sure it was safe and reliable.  Highly recommended.  After the debacle I had with Avian in Bremerton it was a great relief to have such a great experience!

Anyway, on with the pictures!

A picture of the work crew responsible for all required help!  Harry as usual was there to assist in wresting this beast into position. 

Oh yea...I was there too.  :-)

On its feet and this thing is BIG!

Yea, I know it hasn't been a full month since my last post but I thought this was post worthy.  I'm pretty excited about it anyway.  The fuselage is up on its own gear!  The process was actually pretty easy with the help of Harry's lift table.  I slid it under the fuselage with a movers blanket on top of it and then lifted the fuse about 2" at a time.   After each lift I would put a small 2x4 block of wood on top of the fuse stand just in case the table failed.  Once I had it up about 11" the legs would slide in so I could final drill and mount them.

Here the fuselage is up high enough to get the gear leg in.  You can't see it in this picture but I did have to support the tail as the rest of the fuselage moved up.

Gear legs are installed, final drilled, and bolted to the fuselage.  The wheels are slid on for support but the rest of the wheel parts (brakes, brackets, etc) are not installed yet.

Finally the gear is all done, the nose gear is done, and I rolled the whole thing out into the driveway so I could clean up the garage.  The orange bucket is full of water to help hold the nose down.  You can also see a blue post that I attached to the tail to keep it from dropping as weight shifts around.  Its actually pretty well balanced at this point.

I also installed the heater hoses in the tunnel.  I had to add a special bracket to the left side of the tunnel wall to keep the hose from interfering with the rudder cable arms.

GPS antenna for the G3X.  This is the internal GPS which is WAAS but not certified so it can't be used for approaches legally.

Another month and a bunch of little tasks done

 This month has been full of different types of tasks.  Some of them have been "domestic" as Amy calls it (such as staining the deck and power washing the pavers), and some have been RV-10 related.

For the RV-10 I have several tasks completed and a bunch that are most of the way done.  It seems every time I go to finish a task I have to order another part to complete the job.  So here is a list of things I have done or "almost" done.  :-)

• Installed the Comm 2 antenna in the right side windshield channel.  I will probably do another post on this task because if it works its going to be pretty cool.  Basically I used a piece of Coax, stripped back 15.25", folded the shielding wire back over the outer sleeve, and then heat shrunk the whole thing together to form a half wave antenna that was then slid up the channel I created in the windshield frame.  Don Pansier from DeltaPop aviation gave me the instructions on how to do this.  I love his antenna's but he didn't have a flexible offering so he gave me this.
• Installed the tunnel wire hangars and tidied up the tunnel wiring.  
• Installed the transponder antenna coax.
• Installed Comm1 antenna coax.
• Assembled the seats, well mostly.  I plan on fabricating and installing some shoulder harness brackets to the seats.  That is another story for another day.
• Wired up the overhead lights.
• Installed the rear baggage area bulkhead vent flanges.  I used a combination of epoxy and pull rivets to attach them to the aft side of the baggage area bulkhead.
• Pressure tested the fuel system that passes through the cabin.
• Torqued the brake line fittings.
• Wired up the control stick grip buttons.
• Wired up the vent fans in the glare shield skin.
• Installed the heater hose attach bracket.  This is not in the normal Van's location due to the rudder cable arms I have in the tunnel.  The hose actually goes down below the arms and then back up over the spar.  I used this bracket to hold the hose down below the cable arms.
• Installed the ELT wiring.
• Tidied up a bunch of wiring runs.

Finished up the Pitch and Yaw servo wiring.

Riveted in a doubler for the Comm 1 Antenna

Installed the wing root wiring connectors for both sides.

Installed RivetNuts on both front seats for mounting of a shoulder harness bracket.  

Seats covered and ready for installation.  I didn't use any glue to hold the fabric to the foam because I may want to install seat heaters in the future.

More wiring

Dang it!  I am sure I just posted that last post a week or so ago....

Yep, more wiring.  Well, wiring and related tasks.  The past few weeks have been a blur of small tasks all related to getting the interior panel area all buttoned up.  I expect the engine to be ready in the next month or so which means I will want to get the airplane up on its gear and engine mounted. 

This is a rather odd perspective but its under the center console looking aft to where the fuel valve extension comes up through the tunnel (the star shaped object bolted on with 3 washers and one nut.  Below that is the bracket that will hold the throttle and prop cable housing.  What you can't see even further back is the base of the throttle quadrant.

Throttle quadrant bolted down to the tunnel cover.  There is a sizable doubler on the under side of this sheet that is attached by all those AN470 rivets you see.

This is what it looks like now.  The quadrant is bolted on, the cable mount is bolted on, and the wire loom for the headset jacks is bolted to the tunnel cover.

Following the footsteps of a couple others who have gone before me I attached the silver relay housing to the SDS CNC'd ECU enclosure.  The wiring harness for the two just seemed to be made for this.

This is the back side of the firewall where the ground penetration goes through.  Still lots of wire work to do including some support needs.

Here the CNC is cutting the plate you see in the next picture.  This is where the headsets will plug in.  I'm only installing the Lemo plugs in this airplane.  I will purchase a couple of the dual GA headset adapters to keep in the airplane for headsets that require that method.  This should help eliminate any ground loops that the GA plugs are famous for.

Here the Lemo plugs are installed and ready to be mounted in the center console.

I installed and wired up much of the FlyLED control board as well.  This is in the foot-well of the right side rear passenger seat.  There is a panel that covers this area and its a good common location for all light wiring runs.

I did a bit of wiring on the firewall as well.  Here you can see some of the various wires coming through the firewall pass-through as well as some of the power harness.  The big white cable that goes from the solenoid on the left to the solenoid on the right is the cross connect cable. The smaller white wire on the left is the backup battery power supply.

Most of the wires are installed at this point.  Still a few more to terminate like the blue and brown wires you see hanging out.

This is the final look of those label plates that I engraved on the CNC a few weeks ago.  I think they look good!

A little dark but the purpose of this picture was to show that the Magnetometer is installed, can bus terminated, and wired up.  The only wiring I have to do in the tunnel is to install the Yaw servo connector.

Wiring harness goes in

Several months ago I created a "to-do" list of tasks I have yet to complete before this thing flies.  I spent a significant portion of my Hawaii trip thinking and documenting this list.  I then put a guestimate of how many hours each item would take to complete.  Then I made an assumption on how many hours a day on average I work on the airplane.  The end result was a timeline that I could use to measure my progress.  Well, let me tell you that no matter how much time I spent trying to figure out what tasks were yet to be complete I missed a few.  On several tasks I grossly over estimated the time required, and on others I grossly underestimated.  This darn wiring hardness has been one of those that I grossly underestimated!  In spades!  I think I budgeted myself about a month to fabricate the harness and then a week to install it.  Yikes, I think I'm on week two of installation and I'm still not done!

Anyway, here is the current status in pictures.

Part of installing the wiring harness is making sure the wires are run to the correct location and in the correct length.  To do that I had to finish the installation of the center console.  While I was doing that I figured I might as well install the throttle quadrant so I know where wires can be run.  In this picture the center console has been cut to allow the quadrant arms to come through.

This is a view inside the center console looking at the location where the throttle quadrant will be mounted.

First picture of the harness as I start hanging it on the sub-panel.

A little further down the road as the instrument panel frame is installed and the VPX, backup buss, acc buss, and engine buss fuse panels are installed.  The ground wires are all plugged in, and the radio stack has all of the backing plates installed except the GNC255 which is still in the 9A.

Pilot side is much cleaner than the other side.  Not as many wires but several more plastic tubes for the pitot static system.

Instrument panel is installed long enough to make sure the wires are properly routed.

The switches I am using have a back-light feature that makes a panel light illumination unnecessary.  This bundle of wires is mostly related to that function but it also includes a few ground wire runs.

And what post would be complete without me showing some of the CNC work that goes along with this process.  In this picture you can see two placards.  The first one on the lower side of the picture is for the flap switch.  Only the engraving is complete on this one.  The CNC itself is working on cutting out the center hole for the start switch.  If you look closely you can see the "Engine Start" engraving that goes around the label.

This is the back side of the instrument panel.  Here you can see the switch wires and their proposed routing. 2/12/2021 EDIT:  If you are looking at the wiring config on these switches...don't.  I just found out that they were wired incorrectly.  If you use the Carling switches don't wire by the pin location...use the numbers for each pin.  The wiring diagram is deceiving because it shows the contact points being in one configuration when they are actually in another.  Use a volt meter to test the pins to make sure you have it right!

Wiring Harness part 2 & Panel comes together

The wiring harness is slowly coming together.  All of the wires that will be installed outside of the airplane are in, all connectors that do not have to be run through a bulkhead are installed, and its about ready to be installed.

Some lessons learned for the next time I have to do this.

• Use 22 awg wire for all shielded applications.  24 awg is a bit small and seems to make fragile connectors and anything larger than 20 awg is just too big for the HD pins.
• When installing shrink wrap labels make sure they are far enough up the wire that they wont need to be cut to install shield drains.  This is particularly important for wires with the "window" type shield drain like the CAN bus splices.

More wires laid down.  At this point I was thinking I was mostly done....and then the work started.

My flying friend Ben stopped by and took this picture of me working on the connectors.  I started from the bottom of the picture and was working my way up.  The GMA (Audio Panel) connectors were next on the list and by far the most time consuming.  Those connectors had many many wires and almost all of them were shielded wires that had to be grounded to the back-shell of each connector.

Finally all of the avionics connectors are installed and all that is left is the ground wire terminals and the VPX connectors.

I drilled and mounted the center console and that allowed me to finally locate the fuel valve extension handle.

Panel, lower center panel, and the center console installed.  Also in this picture you can see the avionics rack and all but the GNC255 radio tray installed.

Panel inserts are placed in the frame for test fitting.  I think this is going to work well!

Front view of panel with inserts.  Its a little easier to see the engraving in this picture.

Front windshield install

I ran out of some of the wire I needed and it has been really nice out lately so I moved my work efforts back out into the garage.  I've been busy installing the windshield using the Silpruf method along the top and side edges and then using the traditional fiberglass fairing on the front.  I know I've mentioned it in the past but I really like the Silpruf method.  The install looks so darn professional!

I didn't add a bunch of pictures of the process since I have already documented that pretty completely.  Here is a picture of the windshield after the Silpruf install.

It looks like carbon fiber but its not.  This is several layers of regular fiberglass that has been tinted black.  This allows the inside view to be a consistent black trim all around the windshield.  

Right side with fiberglass layers.

After a little epoxy with micro balloons and some sanding... ok, lots of sanding.

Final sanding complete.  Now all I have to do is remove the orange tape and wait for paint day.

I moved the primary voltage regulator from behind the sub panel in the middle bay to this location.  I was looking in this access hole recently and realized I had the perfect location to install the voltage regulator right here.  Easy access for future maintenance.