Life in high def

I like classic, simple things. Bob Seger. Joan Jett. Chopin. Sinatra in the Reprise years after Ava Gardner had kicked the shit out of him. My Classic SV-D1000T. 

It's hard to believe that it's been 13 years since I bought my first Skyview, 10 years since Dynon kindly allowed me to trade it in for the new, fancy, SV-D1000T Touch. I've been lusting after the HDX system every year at Sun n Fun, and every year I think "Naaahhhhhh...".

And yet, it was time to admit my Skyview WAS 10 years old, and probably living on borrowed time. There were some things I never liked, such as the knobs I was afraid would snap off if I put too much weight on them, and the screen colors. With Jim scheduled to come out soon and the engine almost ready to run, it would be foolish not to upgrade now, before retirement tightens the budget next year.

Fortunately, Dynon still offers a trade-in program, and they were quite happy to take my Classic in trade. Stopped off on the way home, and in a few minutes my pocketbook was lighter by a considerable sum, but far less than if I had bought Garmin. 

While the HDX is a drop in replacement for the Classic (including the cable assignments!!), there are a couple caveats. The top screw holes are the same but the display only uses 4 instead of 6 bolts/screws, the middle screw on the Classic is not used, and there is a small gap across the bottom that is not seen, but for which a small gap sealer is provided that screws into the unused bottom Classic screw holes. 

Time for the part we all hate: smoke check. How long can you hold your breath? 

OH NO!!!

Wait. I've seen this before, and I had RTFM before I flipped the switch. Gotta introduce everything to each other.

Cool. Nice colors. Love the shelf for the buttons and bigger, more solid knobs.

 Quick peek outside to initialize the GPS. 

Hooking up

It's easy to build something, but when they need to be repaired, that's another. I've been a bit obsessive about figuring out how to make wires easily disconnectable, I thought I had the problem licked when I discovered dsub connectors, but then I field (hangar?) tested it by sitting in the cockpit and trying to removed them, and it was a mess.

Luckily, a RV pilot on VAF tipped me off about the Molex Microfit 3.0 connectors, the same one Dynon uses on the backup battery connector. The good people at Mouser sell these, and pre-crimped wire leads, too. Perfect for trim relays, among other things. Gives me practice using a multimeter for a continuity check, too.

Unfortunately, they were still too big for the Oznium LED alert lights. Scratching my head, I went back to my model airplane roots and dug up these 2 wire power connectors that are good up to 3A, more than enough for the warning LEDs, and they fit through the screw on nuts perfectly. 

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I also slightly rearranged the order of the warning lights to match the switches on the panel. Note the original LEDs that I love on the bottom row that turned out to be too bright, and the ones we;re using temporarily mounted across the top. Of course, since the new lights have a smaller opening... I could have filled the bigger holes with mud and redrilled them, but there are a couple other mods I want to make to the panel (tell you about them later), so I'll make another, final (yeah right), panel.

Bits and pieces

The new Dynon 160 label maker came (as suggested and reviewed in Kitplanes), I had drug my feet as long as possible because the old one used 1/8" heat shrink tubing, but all I could find in the new one was 1/4". Turns our they're both the same size, somehow, and the 1/4" fits fine.

As did the new, smaller LED indicator lights from Oznium. With the bigger, more aesthitcially pleasing lights I have to add a 10k ohn resistor to balance between an acceptable level of day and night brightness, but the smaller ones have the resistor built-in, and a colored lens to show up better.

But, frustratingly, the 2 piece connector I got is too big to fit through the 8mm hole of the smaller indicator. Going to put that in the "Step away and think about it." pile while we move on to other things for a while. 

Opportunities come from misteaks.

With all the puttin' together and takin' apart I accidentally broke the connector to the Dynon Skyview backup battery. But... in my search for a replacement, a light went off and I thought Hmmm.... if that carries power from a battery to the Skyview, then it should be able to carry more than enough power for a LED. Looks like the OAT sensor uses the same type of connector, and it looks like it would fit in an Oznium 11mm LED sized hole.
 

Yup. Kewl. 

A quick post on the Dynon forum yielded the part number for the OAT sensor connector, a followup call to Mouser yielded the part number for the 3 hole backup battery connector, turns out they're rated for 5A, 600V. Hot stuff, they'll be here Friday, in time for some good weekend work.

 Best part, they're only $0.32 each. Whoo-hoo!!

Blinded by the light

Now that we're working in the front avionics compartment again, I was reminded of an old saying that goes along the lines of "Sure, you can install it, but can you fix it once you install it?" With that in mind a quick fit check to make sure that I could get to the stuff I'm now working on. Yes, I do have access. All is well.

During the Quest for the Perfect LED Indicator, I came across some lights by Oznium. Aesthetically, they were very nice. But they were blindingly bright, even in daylight.

Oznium suggests I put a resistor in the circuit to lower the voltage and dim the lights, I checked with Rotax, Dynon, and ACI, and all said it was Ok to put a resistor on the ground/return side of the LED in their systems. Since the gear lights all hook into a common, pigtailed ground that was a perfect spot to test.

A dsub connector made the pigtail removable.

And connectors on each side of the resistor made it plug-n-pray. A gent on VAF had the same problem as I did and suggested a 10k ohm resistor. My first try was discouraging because I used a 10 ohm resistor, it was kindly pointed out that I missed the size by a factor of K. (Missed it by THAT much.)

Huge difference when you use the correct size.

Still a little brighter than I'd like for night flying, but I won't be doing a lot of that, and I can live with it.

...

Listen to the airplane

With what I consider the hardest part of the rewiring job over, it was time to turn to easier ones. I only had a day before I had to leave on my next trip, so I wanted to just go in and look at some wiring that had perplexed me on the right side of the nose. Put the kettle on, turned on a little Enya, and I had full intention of working on those puzzling wires, but instead, like a cat trying to show you exactly where to scratch them behind the ears, the airplane drew me to the left side of the avionics compartment, and I spent some time rerunning some wires to the master solenoid.

In a very mellow frame of mind, and having moved on to some new Willie Nelson, I took a look at those wires.

and came up with a simple solution. Had to stop there and go to work, but it's waiting for me, and I patted Osp on the nose before I left, and thanked her. 

Sometimes, the airplane leads you where and when you need to go.

The Big Snip

Since i had all the wire bundles opened up, it was an opportunity to add labels to the wiring. Yes, this is an ancient label maker, I've since found out one roll of this heat shrink could have bought a new maker and a couple rolls of tape. (but it did make 1/8" heat shrink tubes, which the new one I've got on order does not.

Hopefully I'll never be reopening the bundles, but if I do, it will be easier to sort through them. I'll shrink them down later when I'm tying the bundles up.

More Adel clamps, these to run the wires under the radio rack to the left side of the panel. These are big ones for ease of installation, later I'll be replacing them with smaller ones that do not allow the wires to move. 

And it's time to check everything two, three times, and start cutting. 

Much nicer.

I've needed a way to make quick disconnects of wires, with the small amount of room behind the panel and size of some of the opening the standard, large plastic multi-connectors were not an option.  I'm not sure if there's any problem the VAF have not figured out, but it was suggested to just use d-sub connectors, wrapped in heat shrink. For some reason dsubs intimidated me, which meant it was something I needed to learn.

Yes, at 59 my eyes aren't 15/15 anymore, but those dubs are SMALL!!!

Warning lights all dressed up. Note that to fit through the hole they have to be staggered.
 

One persons suggestion was to put heat shrink around the connectors, then tie them off with wire lacing cord instead of heat shrinking them. 

When I got to adding the connectors to the landing gear warning system alert lights and its itty, bitty wires/mounting holes, the tie-off-heat-shrink method was impractical because of it's bulk.

I tried knife/handshake connectors, also far too bulky. Things were looking grim. 

The solution (again, tip of the balding head to VAF) was clear heat shrink, carefully shrunk with the tip of the soldering iron on each end to hold it in place.

You gotta be cautious with the iron, but not too cautious. If you stay too far away from the connector the wires can separate, something I would not have noticed had I not been using clear heat shrink (Clear heat shrink has become my new favorite invention.) and would have been a nightmare to troubleshoot.

In the meantime, the area under the radio where the landing gear and flap selector is was a wiring nightmare. It took 3 days. Wish I could figure out a way to make this into a separate panel and removable, if we end up redoing the panel again it will be solely to do so. TJ may may have an idea, and knowing him, will whip out a new panel in a matter of minutes. (Ok, maybe not minutes, but very quickly.) Actually since writing this I'm even more convinced that I need to make it removable, and think I know how. It won't look as nice, aesthetically, but if I don't and I need to make a repair in the future I'll either have to pull the entire panel, or swear a lot doing the repair.

There's a small terminal strip off the starter switch that feeds a few systems,

a visit to my old RC airplane toolbox yielded some 4-40 blind nuts to mount it with. 

I was deep into the landing gear sub-pane one day when someone yelled from the gate, asking to be let in. I was NOT having a good day and did not want to get distracted with someone who just wanted to banter and distract with the usual So when's it gonna fly? harharhar... comments. I yelled out the code (since they had called me by name), but a few minutes later heard a familiar voice saying "She's looking good, Steve.". I was delighted to see an old friend, Hal Beatty, who was one of my mentors at the Heritage Flight Museum and had retired last year. A bad day suddenly got better.

Hal was driving an old Ford he had just completed restoring. That's not a restoration, it's a work of art.

Ok, Power up again. I've got a small electrical glitch to chase (there always is) but so far it looks like I did all the other connections right.

One embarrassing thing happened, though. I had gone over what I thought was EVERY switch, checking that they were all Off, but missed the landing gear switch. I had the breaker pulled, and must have thought that was the switch, too, so after initial powerup I started turning systems on, one at a time. To my horror, as soon as I pushed in the gear cb the left main started retracting, but I was able to quickly yank it back out before it got too far. Luckily, a hangar neighbor was there, and we both were able to lift Osp up enough to allow the gear to reverse and get back down in the locked position. Jim laughed his ass off about it when I told him, had me check a couple things, and luckily there was no damage except to my wounded pride. Lesson learned.