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Last Modified 3rd September 2001
1st August No building
2nd - 3rd August Worked on the port side wiring.
4th - 5th August No building, abandoned my sons and took Carol away for the weekend.
6th - 8th August More wiring
9th August Made up the power supply for the active noise reduction headsets. To ensure a really clean supply this power supply has a 12 volt regulator feeding to a DC/DC converter which then feeds a 9v regulator.
10th August Mounted the main panel and the two sub panels in the retract lever space into the instrument panel housing and tried it for a fit. Mutter. I discovered that the AoA box and the ELT repeater panel conflict. I am going to have to have a think as to which one is going to move.
11th August Wired in the overhead audio sockets. To provide isolation
from the metal mounting plate I am bought four sets of plastic isolation washers
from B&C Specialities. The ANR power supply is provided by two threadlocking
3.5mm jacks located between the audio sockets. I finished wiring the port side
lower panel connector.
12th August A beautiful clear mid winter's day so, having spent a few hours drilling holes in the sky I took the control surfaces outside and did a final sand on them. I discovered a dip in the top surface of the port aileron which I had missed before so that got filled. The technique of using single layer of primer as a marker coat over the filler is a great way of showing up all the little bits that you missed early just by eyeballing the filler.
13th - 17th August OK, who stole my week. One second it was Monday and the next I was collapsing in a heap on Friday evening. A bit too busy with work to play planes this week.
18th August I needed a second connector block on the port side to bring more wires into the instrument panel so I made that up and positioned it so that it wouldn't conflict with the panel fixtures. I really wasn't happy with the path that I had brought the pilot control column wires back to the firewall as they could possibly conflict with wheel retraction if a cable mount came loose. One swift chop with a pair of side cutters freed the cable run up to allow it to be removed from the aircraft. I relaid the wires in the port cable duct, down the side of the seat and then entered the thigh support on the left side. I drilled through the thigh support face just left of centre at an angle that would break into thew thigh support space and fed the cable sleeve from the control column into that area. A nine pin Mate-N-Lok connector joins the column to the main cable run which, if the pins are removed from the connector, allows me to remove the column. Most of the wires from the MAC switch on the column do not need to go into the instrument panel so I used PIDG cable joiners within the cable loom to link them to the aileron and pitch trim wires that were already in place.
19th August The alternator warning lamp wires from the alternator cutout relays needed some form of protection and, as I had run these with 20AWG wire I was able to create 24AWG fusible links to provide protection. A fusible link is a small length of wire 4AWG smaller than the wire it is designed to protect. This sits inside a fiberglass wire sheath to restrict the failure to a puff of smoke. I made a couple of these up using PIDG wire joiners and ended up with a very tidy installation.
20th August Graham Singleton gave me a very good tip about this stage of the build process some time ago... create a list of things you need to do. What he didn't tell me was that this list has a habit of growing at an alarming rate as the building continues! Carried on wiring.
21st-23rd August No building
25th August Prepared a plan of action for the weekend. Target.. finish of all the port side wiring and the wing sockets.
26th August Finished off the wing socket wiring for both port and starboard. While wiring up the second port side firewall connector block I discovered that the push to talk button on the pilot stick wasn't working. I opened up the top of the stick and discovered a broken wire. Now this is a tricky area to work in as the wires are only 26AWG and will happily break if you aren't careful.... which I did to another one while fixing the first. Luckily I stopped at that point and was able to close up the top again.
27th
August Tidied off the port side connector and terminated most of the
starboard side power wires. I have a few shielded wires coming through the
aircraft and wanted a tidy way of terminating these. The picture at the left
shows the basic technique I used. The outer sheath is removed to an appropriate
point and then a small hole opened up in the shield wire. With the help of a
suitably acquired embroadery needle the inner wire is pulled back through the
hole. Heatshrink is slid onto the shield and once that is shrunk down another
smaller piece is fitted over the location where the two wires part company.
You may have noticed in the phot above that the panel doesn't reach the edge as I had allowed a gap for the door strip to be applied. Unfortunately I allowed too much of a gap so ended up painting the little strip down the side with grey paint.
28th -29th August Did my first 'Turn on and Tune for Maximum Smoke' test. I livened up the secondary circuit and then spent a merry couple of evenings trying to work out why the secondary master wouldn't turn on. Needless to say, the relay was wired back to front with the common going to ground rather than positive. Rule #7283. The control side of a master switch goes to ground which means the other side must go to positive. With that sorted out I was able to test the alternator relays for both secondary and primary circuits. I need to get hold of a variable supply now to ensure that the over voltage trip circuits are working correctly.
30th August No building, working late.
31st August It is a bit quieter around the house today... mainly because I have developed a cough and lost my voice. Carol doesn't like the cough much but thinks the secondary effect is a blessing in diguise. No building, dug out a good book and retired to bed.
