Can you hear me now?

One of the last pieces of the electrical/avionics system arrived, the connectors for the avionics bus. These are custom made and tested by a company called Approach that specializes in avionics wiring.

They get attached and laced into the existing system, with a little help from a friend. 

The PAR100EX comes configured for a 28v DC system, changing it over to a 14V system requires opening up the case and moving a jumper.

The headset jacks get a LOT of use and force applied to them inserting and removing the cables, plus the jacks are a bit shallower than the foam panel. Once again, the Dremel hollowed out a cavity on the back of the panel, which will be filled with epoxy for reinforcement and redrilled. That bit would go through the panel in an instant of inattention, which made me nervous, which made my hand shake, which made me more nervous, which made......

Good thing I'm not a coffee drinker. Steady as a rock, the jacks fit fine. A little epoxy will be applied to reinforce the holes before mounting the jacks.

We're pushing to get this done in time to ship out, hopefully late next week. I came down Wednesday right off a Tel Aviv flight and was only down for 36 hours, I'm back out to Mumbai Friday night. Earlier in the day Thursday Jim asked if I was going to be around at all Friday, I said I had to leave very early to be in position for my trip. He stayed much later than usual, for some reason....

Even with the wiring harness and everything laid out and accessable, some things are just a pain to get to.

But he was really happy when he was able to tell me why he had stayed late

First power up of everything. This was very, very late, and it was damn nice of him to stay and get it done so I could be there.

Couldn't test the radio since we didn't have an antenna, but the intercom sounded great, and all the lights blinked correctly.

I'll be your right seater anytime, Jim.

I want patience, and I want it right now!!

The harness is now complete except for the cables to connect the avionics together. They should be here this week, then we'll mount the panel and wiring harness to the nosedeck, wrap it, pack it, and ship it home. 

While in Florida we saw an Atlas launch. Hard to believe the Shuttle is a museum piece but the Atlas is still launching satellites. 

And here's the steam gauges under illumination. Much better than the old post lights.

One interesting thing to note is the airspeed indicator is marked in miles per hour. I knew the SeaRey was slow, but....

Final preps

When I first started building the fuselage I was persuaded to go with internal limit switches by  some very well meaning pilots. When Jim agreed to help me with my build he made a number of very persuasive arguments in favor of staying with the external switches, and I agreed. This meant going back and adding some parts I had left off that are necessary for the external limit switch system, but not for the internal ones.

Since I am returning to the garage door spring retract system I need to mount the spring. The manual has it on the right side, but I've already got pulleys and holes on the left, so I'm going to leave it be. I did think about mounting the spring in the center of the lower boom tubes with a bracket spanning the lower supports, but after trying a couple times I wasn't confident I could accurately drill 2 holes for the bracket without weakening the tubes, so I've decided to let it be.

How do you attach the spring (a 2 person job) if you're by yourself? Brace the left main and the tailwheel in the retracted position...

tie a rope to the spring, and pull. (Note: If you need to undo this, MAKE SURE you remember to brace the left main gear and the tailwheel, otherwise bad things will happen to your hand. All I'm going to say is Thank god for leather gloves.)

 The tube/transom junction needs to be sealed, the first time I used 3M 5200 Marine Sealant, which was a mess and almost impossible to remove. This time I used West Marine silicone sealant.

More model airplane tricks, a syringe makes it easy to apply deep inside the transom exactly where I wanted it. 

The next day I was wondering if-like the rudder cables-the tubing needed to be secured so it would not eventually work its way free. I exercised the gear a few times and sure enough, they did. Like the rudder cables, a bit of safety wire stopped that.

And a bit of final sanding to the wingtips, just so I could sleep knowing they were done. 

 
I'm on the road for the next 2 weeks, OspRey is all ready for some heavy attention in June.

Stepping back to move forward

Ah... warm weather, and a man's thoughts turn to covering wings....

Previously I had spent an entire day fighting to get the nav and landing light wiring through some silicone tubing out to the wingtip and front spar/strut junction. I didn't like the stuff because it was so hard to get through the tubing, and if there was ever a problem there was no way I was going to be able to replace the wire without removing the covering.

Instead I replaced it with 3/4" bilge tubing, and zip tied it to the upper ribs. 

Not only was it easier to run the wire through the bilge tubing, I was able to run both sets of wire inside a single tube. Little bit of weight saved.

 

Hangar's getting crowded. Good to be building again, having the wings uncovered brings back memories. I've come a long way in my building skills. 

Another thing I picked up from Jim was that the wing LE sheeting would be held down by the covering, making the wrapover and screws wear points and unnecessary.

Excellent tool for trimming the sheeting, a sheet metal nibbler. Wish I had had this when I was cutting the slots for the LE/TE strut attach plates. 

I'm getting a little arthritis in my hands from years of computers, waiting tables, etc so I'm thinking about making my own stick grips. I've made some plaster molds to play with first. 

I found the finish of the trailing edge of the wingtips to be poor, with open gaps in the glass cloth. I did some work on it a couple years ago, and went back to do more this year. 

After which I talked about it with other builders. The tips are made from two separate halfs, then joined together. Only problem is the trailing edge is too small for someone to get a layer of glass/resin in to glass the top and bottom together. Instead expanding foam is squirted in, which is ok, but the foam continues to expand, sometimes gradually splitting the tip apart. So instead a 2" line of Polyfiber reinforcing tape will be ran all along the edge of the wingtip, then painted.



Finishing up, a look at the wire harness, almost complete. Note that zipties are not used, since those seemingly innocent plastic wraps can actually wear though the teflon coated wire, causing short circuits. Still on schedule for having the electronics delivered in mid-June.

Yellow things are heat-shrink tubing imprinted with the function of the wire.

It's Alive!!!!!!!!

First power to the electrical system, testing the landing gear motor circuit.

And it's even got green eyes......