Today was dedicated to getting the panel finished so I can send it out for lettering.  It has the longest lead time to get back to me.    The radio cans were positioned and the nuts were bonded to the side boxes to hold everything in alignment after disassemble.

Next was milling the backside of the .200″ thick carbon panel down to .125″ thick in for some of the switches.   Some areas were milled to .060″ for LED lights.

Two “Data Ports” were machined into the panel.  These ports will allow the pilot to upload flight plans, software, maps, etc to the Grand Rapids Flight system, as well as down load recorded flight data (air and engine) to be analyzed after landing.

The switch at the bottom of the panel is actual an air valve which will allow the pilot to have an ”alternate static” port in case the fuselage port gets plugged.   I think I may look for some different knobs.  I don’t like the size of these all that much.  I think they are a somewhat big.

I started laying out the wiring for the GTR system.  All these wires are in addition to the ones in the back of the plane which are for the engine monitor.    This doesn’t come close to what needs to go into the plane.    When I was a kid I used to think it was fun to unravel a mess of tangled string.    This wiring rats nest makes me think of those days long ago…..

Finished installing the cans for the radios today and wanted to see how the panel looked together (for the most part).  Found a minor lettering issue I’ll need to resolve before it is sent off.  This is certainly the most advanced LongEZ panel in the world.  I have never seen an EZ or Berkut with this much electronics.  It is going to be a blast to learn to fly this bird with all the computers on board….

Wow, I sure have a lot of conectors to hook up to wire the panel….. should be fun!

I finished up the work on the WVO car controller.    I built a test stand to simulate all the connections and switches of the car and dang it, the thing worked as I originally designed it.  I dont know why I thought it was a bad design.  After a few hours work on the timer circuit it now works perfectly.  

Basically, in AUTO, the WVO system now waits for the coolant water to get up to 60C, turns on the oil supply valves, turns on an electric oil heater to keep the oil a minimum of 50C (it cycles as necessary). 

If the fuel in the supply tank gets to 1 gal, it shuts everything down. 

When the car is turned off in AUTO the system closes the oil valves and keeps the engine running for 30 sec to purge out the WVO before it turns the car off.   Very cool…  The next step is to install LED’s and the switch in the dash with some nice lettering to make it look good.  It is amazing to me that a commercial unit which does the same thing this does cost $350.  Mine cost about $25.

The engine is now on the plane.  It really looks good now with the newly painted engine mount and engine.

The is a close up of the firewall penetrations.  After all the wires are run, I will clamp the firestop tubing around the wires.

The insturment panel came back to me unletter but with some nice glass work done around the leg openings and radios.  I spent all day fitting the radios to the panel so they would have exactly 1/4″ exposure from the panel.

 Tommorow, I’ll finish screwing the radio boxes to the panel and some other detail work which needs to be done prior to sending it off to be lettered.

Yesterday, I stared making a new batch of fuel probes which have been selling surprising well.  Thats when I found Mr. Lathe was very sick…..  Yikes, he is one  of my best friends in the shop!  

Stop the presses, this is an emergency!!   

After downloading the wiring diagrams from the web, I spent hours trying to figure out how those dam low paid chinese gals wired him up.  At least the numbers were in english.  Imagine, hand drawings of the wiring!    Chicago Tools (Harbor Freight stuff)=Made in China junk (but the price is soooooo cheap).

After a few hours trouble shooting, I found a contractor had gone bad which has been ordered 2 day express from Calif.   I should be back up and going on Friday!  Woohoo!  

Replacing the contractor out (upper right box) from this wiring mess is going to be a challenge.  I think I would rather take part the dash of the car again.

After the trouble shoot bout with Mr. Lathe, I started back reassembling the engine.  It looks really good now.

Before I remount it on the engine, there was some firewall work to be done such as pulling wires through my bulkhead fittings.  What a mess!  At the top is a 95 db backup beeper.  It is great for scaring birds on landing and warning people at airshows to keep out of my freaking way!

This is a piece of 1/8″ copper tubing which will be for the manifold pressures sensor.  I prefer putting a copper tube though the bulkhead instead of just running a piece of rubber tubing.  I think it is safer and is less trouble some when removing the engine. 

I also stared working on the wiring of the engine information system area.  It is starting  to get fun now.    I love wiring!

The oil pan is back from the machine shop.  They only charged $80 for machining the flange flat.  I hate oil leaks and I am sure it was worth the effort and money.

I have a long list of things to do from painting the engine accessory case to mounting ground blocks before I can put the engine back on the firewall.  It was really to my advantage to take the engine off the plane (took less than 1 hr) to gain access to the firewall and the front of the engine. 

This shows the firewall through bushings I made and installed.  Since they are high temp fiberglass products, they are floxed into the firewall.  They are nicely rounded on each end to prevent chafing of the wires and possible contact with the grounded firewall.    The starter cable has over 600 amps flowing through it and I want to make sure there is no possible way to contact the firewall, ground out, and start a fire. 

The bushings are 1″ long with a 1/2″ flange exposure into the engine compartment so I can put firestop on the end. In the unlikely event of an engine fire, the firestop will prevent fire/smoke from entering the cabin from the wire openings.

Today I put in some long hours and got a lot of things done. 

While sanding the engine mount to prep it for painting, I found an vent hole which had never been closed off because a support rod was in the way.  I just drilled a second hole, welded it closed, filled the tube full of linseed oil and closed it off.

Since I had the engine mount off, I took the opportunity to close off any unnecessary hole in the fire wall.  This was a big one the original owner had cut to allow for a DB-25 plug for the ignition system. 

I tired welding, but the metal is so thin I just couldnt get a stable arc, the fiberfax just vaporizes and blows holes in the weld.  Hum…what to do??

I decided to install cover plates over the holes with SS rivets.  It worked out much better. 

this plate closes off some holes used for the ignition system high tension leads.

There was a couple of big ones just below the cable pulley.   Closed off too.

I finished painting the engine mount.  Hopefully I’ll install it tomorrow if the paint is hard enough.

This is a one of four firewall bushing I machined out of a high temp fiberglass rod.  I am using these bushing to for all wires going through the firewall to prevent any contact (shorting) of the wires.  They are made long on the engine side so I can put a firestop sleeve over the exposed bushing and clamp it to the wires.

Today was mainly spent ordering electrical supplies.  I want to make the instrument panel completely removable with cannon connectors so it can wired and operated on the bench.  The connectors are cheap, but the dam pins are very expensive.  I think that is how they really make their money…. little machined pins.

I have started to pull wires as I am waiting on the oil pan to be machined flat.  I cant put it on the engine just yet because the welding process warped it.  It rained all day in Charleston, so I couldn’t paint the engine mount either.

The headrest area behind the passenger is going to be very busy with wiring and instrumentation.  It will all be covered by a trim piece and a headrest.

The wiring from the engine monitor has 50 wires connected to it.  Each one has to be identified labeled and tested, then the drawings needs to be reviewed and corrected.  Tedious, but very necessary for future maintenance.   Actually I kind of think it is a bit of fun.  Sort of like doing a puzzle, sort of like doing artistry because it also has to look good when you are done too.

Today the ADS-B antenna installation was finalized.  Installation requires two things…. a ground plane (done) and somehow attaching the antenna to the fuselage.  It finally occurred to me, I didnt need to dish out the 1″ thick interior foam to fit the 1/2″ long antenna studs, I just extended the studs with some threaded brass bushing made on the lath.  This made installation MUCH easier as I now can easily access the nuts without cutting up the interior.

I talked to the manufacture of the CuPro-Cote^TM paint.  He said others have used it for ground planes and it works great.  If you plan to use it, paint it in THIN layers since excess acrylic binder (if you paint it thick) actually reduced the conductivity.

Five patchs of copper tape was cut in a sort of “E” so there would be more edge surface contact area for the paint and attached to the bottom.  

Then the entire surface was given a second coat with part of the tap left unpainted so a wire could be soldered to the tab the then covered with a patch of BID for protection.  I don’t know if I need the extra wire connecting the sections as the resistance of the surface after a second coat of paint from the hell hole to the nose (about 7 ft”) was only 8 ohms. 

Ppod needed some additional “ground planes” which are used for making the antennas work properly.  Some antennas need large ground planes to work such as the transponder and ADS-b antennas.  Since I am adding new antenna (the ADS-B) and there is not enough much room in the plane for the size recommended.  In my plane I had to compromise with smaller ground planes or really odd shaped ones (such as for my lightening detector).  A few years ago, I found some electrically conductive paint which was used in my plane for reducing electrical noise (as shielding).  Ken Miller apparently used a conductive paint successfully for the transponder antenna he installed and since ATC reported no problems picking up the transponder signal, it was decided to just make the area much bigger. 

The entire bottom of the passenger area was painted with this stuff.   After drying,  I tested the resistance of the paint and found it amazingly conductive.  It reads 17 ohms across the fuselage (about 18″).  When tested it with a 12v source, it did not loose .01 volts from front to back of the plane!   I also plan to attach some small copper tape (about 1/2″ sq) to the one side every 12″ and solder a wire on each tab to ground.    It will be interesting to see how this new system works in flight with ATC. 

I hope this works well I can use this technique in future planes!  **NOTE: I used this technique to “enlarge” the ground plane in my LongEZ.  I can now report NO more problems with ATC picking up my transponder.  It is working better than ever!

The fire system bottle was installed today.   I replaced the 2 ea stock bottle holders (47 g ea) with a riveted hose (6 gm) hose clamp with a finger actuator.  You will have to stick your arm way up the spar to tighten the wing bolt and was concerned about interference with the stock clamps.  The hose clamp can swivel out of the way, and overall I saved 96g (3 oz) with the mod.

The additional cable installation for the fire system was micro’d so it will be less noticable when finsished out.

Today we had a very strong thunderstorm after I went flying.  It was easy to see on the XM weather in the plane and my lightening detector was showed significant activity.  This evening, the club manager called and I found out part of the roof of the hanger had blown off.  After checking my plane over, all is well.  Base maintenance should be fixing in the next few days.

Updated pictures of the Boeing 787 Dreamline plant.  They are making amazing progress on it.  The contractor has now started on moving a 2 mile road 500 feet to the south to enlarge the manufacturing site.

The Dreamlifter

This afternoon while emailing DURING A THUNDERSTORM, my computer crashed….  Big time crashed.    I know,  you have always been told turn off all your electrical stuff during a storm.  I THOUGHT I was protected with a UPS and an isolated system, but no, a big crack of lightening,  computer crashed and next thing I know there was the “Hard disk not found” during boot up.  Yikes! 

As recommended I had made a “Recovery Disk” (imagine that)  when I installed the operating system and as annoying as the daily backup is (slowing down the computer) for some reason, I had let it run to completion this morning.   I booted up on the recovery disk, had to do a complete re-image of the computer “C” hard drive (from this morning’s back up) and wala! the computer is working perfectly again.   I keep all my data on the “D” drive (a second drive)  so I didnt lose a single file.   Windows 7 is terrific in my book!   Now I just need to turn off my computer during the next storm.

I had the fuel caps engraved.  Actually they look very cool.  I’ll paint the lettering a suitable color when the plane is painted the plane in Calif.    Polished up and lettered I am sure they will look great!

Disassembly of the plane to prepare it for painting continued today.  I have a huge pile of parts now.  I want to weigh everything added to the plane (such as the heating system) to see how much my work affected the weight of the plane.

The HID landing light installation gave me a bit of trouble. At first, I didnt think it could be installed.  The HID bulb is much taller and a little larger in diameter by 0.015″.  Doesn’t seem like much but the bulb would not sit flush to the bracket . 

Careful, extensive filing and bending of the aft brace bracket was required to get it installed.     The HID light is incredibly bright and requires much less power than the standard 150 watt ligth that was installed. 

Installation of the Halon fire suppression system was stared.  If a fire is sensed in the engine compartment (there will be an alarm on the EFIS),  the pilot can pull a handle on the dash which will flood the engine compartment with halon and quickly put out any potential fire.