Finally the fuselage wiring is done! Today the rats nest of wires in the magically disappeared into an organize mess (lots) of wires.
It is truly amazing to me the number of wires and it is my great hope that all work as planned (or at least be easy to trouble shoot.
I have removed the temporay tie wraps, installing the permanent ones to get ready for the big day tomorrow. I’ll be installing the instrument panel for the FINAL time. It is finally time to “marry” the panel to the plane. I think I should have a big ceremony and eat a cup cake with a candle on it. Shortly power will be applied to the bird and she will start to come to life! Cant wait.
Stbd Side
Port Side
Currently, I am have about 60 pages of wiring diagrams. Boy, talk about time consuming! Each one has to be reviewed, installed, corrected, rechecked numerous times. On the flip side, I can already see the need for the documentation as I forget what I have done from day to day. Just too many wires.
It is easy to image me or anyone trying to fix the wiring 5 years from now thinking how great it is to have detailed records of the installation. I have also drawn wiring harnesses into the paperwork to record where the wires go.
This is a pdf of Pg 56 if you wish to check out. It is the harness for the Noselift system.
Today the wiring on the instrument panel was finished out.
Prior to the final install in the plane, I needed to do as much wiring as possible on the bench. All the harness were hooked up and installed and the point to point wiring on the panel was completed.
What a mess of wires. The majority of them are just power and grounds. I decided to route them on the stbd side of the plane as the port side has a huge number of wires and I didnt want to add to the the complexity.
Nicely bound together. Tomorrow I will do the FINAL installation of the panel in the plane and “marry” the wiring together. Once done, this harness will become part of the plane harness.
I finished installing the rotary switch circuit board into the panel and completed populating the parts onto the lighting logic controller circuit board I designed for the planes lighting system. Overall, I am really pleased at how well it all turned out. Exactly as I had envisioned the end product.
On the panel, LED’s shine into tiny light tubes embedded in the panel which directs the light to the front illuminating the switch position selection. The switch position overall LED’s brightness is controlled by the panel dimmer.
The design purpose of this rotary switch is to reduce the overall number of switches on the panel. I combined 8 toggles switches to 1 rotary selector. The picture above indicates the “Start” position, which is the most dangerous to ground personnel, so when selected, the beeper, wig wag lights, strobes, belly strobe all turn on at once. Maximum awareness… “Warning Will Robinson”
After the engine start up, the selection is, “Taxi” which would be the next expected action. When selected the beeper and all strobes turn off, the taxi/landing/wing belly beacon activate. When you get to the end of the runway one selects “Day Landing” (and takeoff) and so forth through the different regimes of flight such as “Day” flight, “Night Landing” (and take), “Night Flight” and lastly flying in the “Clouds” (at night). Each position activates the desired combination of lights.
A long time ago I was always amazed at how complex an aircraft instrument panel looked. Lots of switches and breakers. Why? Now look at a fine car, there is none of that sh*t. I think the modern car turn signal stalk is a work of design/engineering art. Think about it it…. it turns you wipers of in all sorts of modes and speeds, has a button to wash the windshield, selects the Hi/Lo beams, flashes a car in the daytime AND activates your turn signals. So cool.
When I was a kid my dad was amazed when our VW came with a turn signal which had a little button button on the back side to FLASH the high beams. I think it was a German thing for the Audubon to indicate you wanted to pass someone. What a long way the simple turn signal switch has come.
Since the pilot ALWAYS activates (or should activate) a combination of light for best positional awareness for other planes, and for different types of flights, then why not build something which “automates” the process. Why not simply the panel if I could?
The lighting logic controller is a simple relay board with diode isolators. You can add/change the light combinations by changing diodes. Sort of like programing a simple computer. There are 8 relays each rated at 10 amp / circuit. A 12 pin plug on the board mates into the plane’s lighting wiring. I added a yellow LED light for each relay to show when it is activated to allow me to bench test the board.
If you would like to see how the circuit works, click on this link: Logic board controller
Work has started back on the plane. I am starting to install all the harnesses I built.
Here is a rats nest of wires. All my buddies are amazed that I can keep track of the the wires.
The wire runs look good when installed in the plane.
This is my first attempt ever at making a circuit board which will be used for the lighting control system. After designing it in Acad, I put a mask on the copper circuit board and used acid to etch away the unneeded copper. I am amazed at how great it turned out. I think I might try making a circuit board for the waste vegetable computer I make for my car.
Next I’ll drill the board, and add the components needed to make my lighting system functional.
I have been hard at working building harnesses. I believe I am now up to about 10 of them. You know the funny thing is the wiring is fairly easy, but keeping track of all the wires (documentation) is turning out to be a major PITA. I now know why most people do not have wiring diagrams of their airplane. It is just too difficult to keep everything up.
The wiring bundles on the floor.
More to make before I can start installing them in the plane….
I wanted to show you the greatest thing for wiring a composite plane I have ever come up with.
The big problem with wiring one of our birds is how do you secure the wires to the structure. You cant just put screws in the side of the plane. Securing wires is a big issue…
I came up with a great way to do this which weighs almost nothing. I call them zip tie loops (ZTL)s. After you fabricate them (which takes very little time) you can secure them anywhere on your structure by just gluing them in place with a little bit of flox. They are so light you dont even need to secure them or hold them in place while the floxis curing. Just wet the back side and postion. Once cured, they will self destruct before they will come loose.
Just stick them where ever you need to secure a wire bundle. I must have 30 or 40 of them in the plane now.
ZTL’s are made by taking 3 layers of wetted glass and laying them over a rod or some square material (1/4″ x 1/4″ I would recommend at least 1/4″ high. In this picture I just used some scrap 1/4″ delron rod I had handy. In this case I tired two different tests. Case one, 1 bid, 1 carbon BID (fair) and case 2, 2 BID and 1 carbon (better). I dont think the carbon helped much so I would just recommend 3 or 4 layers of BID.
I like to use the LoVac method to make sure there is a nice tight loop in the strip.
After curing I used my radial arm saw to cut the slots in the long strip and a pair of scissors to separate the loops. A little paint and they are ready to install in the plane.
Here is some ZTL’s that I am spraying black to match the interior of the plane.
I have decided the hardest part of wiring is not hooking up wire but finding a home for all the components needed to operate the plane. All the receivers, antennas, control modules, switches, grounds, etc. This issue is even more difficult to do in a highly complex and space limited plane like a Longez.
I must have installed and removed the front panel 30 times already. I wanted to make sure all electronics were easy to get to, removable with minimal hassle with the caveat that the final product should not look busy or complex. This is not trivial. I hate having to take a bunch of stuff out of my plane to get to a component to work on.
Also, I did not want to see a complex of wire everywhere. Basically when I get done, there will be very little wire visible. The worse you’d have to do is remove the canard (about 10 min) to get to anything in the plane.
I have installed cannon plugs on the dash to make it removable. It wont be easy and very rare operation, but it is a requirement of mine.
The mount area of the EFIS GPS receiver.
Mount area for the heat sink of the diode isolators.
Mount are of the ADS-B receiver, ADS-B GPS antenna and Garmin GPS Antenna.
Orginally, the plane had two batteries in the front. I moved one of them to the back seat area which gave me a little free space (where the battery used to be) to work with. I decided to use it for the electric trim controller, emergency extension battery and emergency gear down module. By stacking them they are about the same size as the former battery. I could have used a bunch of foam in the area to hold them in place but decided to use alum separators to stack the components and to keep the battery from moving.
Finally, all the modules are mounted.
The last part of the puzzle to mount is the joy stick. There is a LOT of wiring in the joy stick to work with. After it is wired and mounted, I’ll really be able to start to wire point to point and hook everything up. It wont take too long at that point until I can start powering systems up.
I did get the instrument panel for the plane back from Aerotronics. The new lighting label looks fabulous. Now I can get started on the final wiring if I could only find the plane in the mess of the work shop….
Doug bought over some more dirt today. Four huge truck loads of fill soil to be spread out in the yard. I am planning to use a rotary laser level to do the final spreading of the soil to make sure the slope of the yard is correct for good drainage which was why I couldnt use this part of my yard in the past. The rain would collect in a low area and the ground would turn to mush.
Lots of work ahead!
I took my heater to Gerharts to try out. Boo hoo, it didnt work exactly as planned. I was focused on having lots of surface area (60 ft of 3/8″ tubing) to raise the temperature of the oil. I found out the temperature increased nicely, but the second part of a good design is adequate flow rate. I considered this, but thought the oil would get thin enough to easily flow through the tubing. It doesnt.
The flow rate is about 1.1 gpm with a 40 f temp rise. The temp was fine if you want to spend a couple of hours twiddling your thumbs waiting, but I know I will eventually rebuild the heater using 1/2″ tubing to increase the flow rate (I hate when something is right). Right now the overall system is good enough to last through the winter. Next fall, I’ll tear the heater apart, sell the copper and change it over to larger tubing.
The panel is being reworked too. I wanted each light switch position illuminated with a blue, green or orange LED. In order to match the rest of the panel and since the LED’s are very small (T-1 type) I decided to use light tubes with the LED’s positioned behind the panel. Each hole had to be very carefully drilled on the milling machine.
A white LED light is shined behind the switch to see how they would look. Awesome!
The panel will be sent back to Aerotronics to have the label replaced with a new one which corresponds correctly with the new LED lighting.
The yard is started to open up. I have been spending lots of time on the dozer. I’ll tell you one thing, it is not as easy as it looks to operate one. That beast beats me to death sometime and it is very hard to get everything level. Doug is going to bring me a couple of big truckloads of soil so I can continue building up this area of my yard.
The garbage man had fun with the pile of brush I cleared out of the yard. My pile filled an entire trailer. Tomorrow, I’ll start again clearing out more shrubs.
I wanted to show you the before/after. I decided to go with flush mount LED instead of having them sticking out of the dash.
The clear lens hold the LED’s behind the dash.
I also decided I didn’t like the way the lettering was on the panel for the lighting control. It has been redesigned for a different look and I am going to embed LED’s to indicate which lighting circuit is active. The panel will be disassembled and sent back to Aerotronics for re-lableing. It should take about 2 weeks or so to get it back.
