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.

The cockpit was my office

 Panel temporarily mounted in place, it will be held from overhead by the nosedeck, but this allows me to work on the wiring. 

And put everything (or as much as possible) back in place.

Spaghetti, Part ????

New panel in progress

It may not look like it but there's a huge difference from this

to this. Very happy with my progress.

Still cold, but good enough weather for outdoor cookin'....

back scratches,

an airshow

and soaring. 

With the wiring sorted out it was back to working on the panel. I had been thinking about doing a 3 piece removable panel mounted to a frame, but the weight and complexity stymied me. I know there's a way to do it, but I'd rather go with a tried and true solution and get going. Paper template transferred to cardboard

and fit checked. 

drawn on some .063" 2024T3

and cut. My new favorite tool, it cuts faster than a sabre saw, which is good (job is done faster) and bad (easier to f-up and make a terminal error in the cut.).

All that other cutting wasn't for waste, practice makes perfect, things fit better and were cut faster this time.

Something that REALLY made me nervous  was bending the side panels. Had to get it right the first time, and I measured,

and remeasured

until my hangar neighbor Jerry kindly showed me how to bend it on his brake.

Perfect. (in retrospect I wish I hadn't drilled the left side panel until after I bent it, but I was worried about trying to drill it after being bent. Oh well, the changes I would have made are not significant.) Off to work for about 2 weeks, things will start moving quickly now. I hope. 

I missed it over the winter, but a little bit more than 30 years ago I started flying fixed wing airplanes. Never in my wildest dreams did I dream I'd be flying a 300+ passenger, 3 week old 787 for a living.

Company policy about social media is pretty restrictive so I won't post who I fly for, but check out this shiny clean landing gear!!!

Going backward, moving forward.

Abominable snowman, or my dog playing in the snow?

And as winter hits in earnest,  a little formation work gets put in.

Here we go. Pull the old panel, take everything off, and cut it apart. Now we're committed to rebuilding the panel.

Practice makes perfect. I'll never be as good working metal as TJ, that takes years of experience and talent, but if I can be competent and get his respect I'll be happy.

I spent an inordinate amount of time deciding on the layout of the landing gear lights, but it's something I honestly find fun. (Another shameless plug for XPanel software, great program.).

I probably voided the warranty by doing this, but I didn't like the ACI eFlap mounting plate, so as both a challenge and solution I decided to make it recessed and cut individual openings for each pushbutton. Wish I could change the color of the buttons, but at least I'll be able to  find them easily.

And for the wing panels. I got tired of fumbling under the panel for the Dynon USB extension and decided to mount it on the left wing panel, while on the right side I wanted to add a USB charging socket for phones, cameras, etc.

To fit the USB ort into the panel I needed room, one version was to change the orientation of the switches from horizontal to angled up along the curve of the glareshield. Failed experiment, adding the USB port made the panel crowded, and the angled switches did not work in a simple flow so the idea was junked and we went back to the horizontal switch layout.

Instead, using my new-found metalworking skills, I'm just going to take the old USB extender and mount it into the panel above the switches.

At the same time, I've been working on the front bulkhead. Paper template first,

transferred to some old foam for fitting. Anther thing that seems easier than it was, I'm sure there's a trick to making paper templates from a complex curve, but if there is, I didn't find it. All good.

Next step will be to glass it in, one of these days when I have time. I'm basically copying the new SeaRey's design, I'll have the battery hanging off the front and the relays on the back, the ELT will be somewhere on aircraft right behind the bulkhead.

A long time ago I had put the seatpans in with Rivnuts, when I burned out working on the panel I took a day and replaced the rear seat mounting tube with a new one.

Now we're seriously digging into the electrical. In a classic case of "You don't know how much you don't know until you realize how much you don't know.", while building the wiring harness I did not  make a detailed list of the wiring, so it's time to go back and make one.

I got to fly this last week. 23 years ago I started out flying ATRs from a gate nearby that no longer exists, it's been a long, strange, wonderful trip.

But really, it's not about the planes, it's about the friends you make along the way. Gator, James, and me at the wrap party for Sun 'n Fun 2019. The t-shirts say "This ain't Oshkosh", which is an informal motto among the volunteers at Sun 'n Fun, and the shirts are available here, with all proceeds going to charity.

And the gang.