June 15, 2020
Today was all about wiring. We settled on ½” shark bite PVC for the wiring conduit a while ago. It’s lightweight, cheap, and used by quite a few builders. I couldn’t come up with a good way to attach it to the wing ribs until I came across Panduit MHSS-SS-D lightening hole mounts. They’re pricey at around $2 each, but make the mounting super simple. I got mine from digi-key, but there’s a few places online that sell them in small quantities. I put them on order and hopefully they come in next week so we can finalize the conduit install.
In the mean time, I ran the wires for the lights and pneumatic tubing for the pitot tube. It hurt a bit to order a fully wired connector from Flyboys and promptly cut the wires apart so I could run them through the conduit, but so be it. Also ordered some 12 gauge wire for the power/ground lines on the pitot probe. We’re running the NAV antenna in the left wingtip since the magnetometer can piggy back off the autopilot wiring that goes through the right wing. Unfortunately this means the NAV antenna RG400 runs alongside the AoA probe heater wires. Aerotronics has assured us they haven’t had issues with that configuration in the past, hopefully we wont’ have to run another conduit in the left wing later to separate the antenna cable from the high power lines.
-Paul
(Total Build Time: 301.5 hrs)