Wiring up the panel

The avionics shipping issue has been a nightmare, with the dealer plainly refusing to honor the deal. A big setback. I finally bought a bunch of lost avionics again :(.

 

 

Anyway, we have made some progress with doing the final wiring for the panel. Installed forest of tabs just behind the actual panel. Never realized I'd require so many grounding points. Also installed a connection strip for various connections to switches etc.

 

 

 

There are a bunch of Dynon boxes that need to be mounted. The ADS-B box goes on the wall behind the panel. The ARINC module as well as EMS box is on a horizontal mount I made between the panel the rear-panel wall. Finally, the transponder and the backup battery are accessible and mounted near the gear towers. 

 

Here is the panel that was finally bolted:

 



There are many things to be done before the panel is finished. For example, still need to pull the wires from the wing and attach taxi / landing lights, pitot heat, strobe etc. This will have to wait till wings are mounted. Similarly a bunch of wiring is left for the firewall forward portion (senders, CHT and EGT etc.). All in all at least 50 hours for all this work (probably more).

Mounting on Gears, Installing Antennas

Since the engine is almost ready to be delivered, its prudent that we mount the fuse on the gear. It might make working on panel slightly difficult, but I think we have tackled quite a bit and rest we should be able to deal with.

The gear were already fitted by the previous builder, so basically our job was to bolt it on and make sure the measurements were within tolerance. Honestly, it was a pain to get the fuse on the gear. A couple of bolts are pretty inaccessible due to the design of the gear towers in the fuse. A lot of folks end up cutting those boxes, and I did wonder if we should have gone that route. But making a structural modification makes me nervous, so decided against it.

Anyway, after almost a day worth of work we got the fuse on the gear (10 hrs). The measurements looked ok, but it seems we might need a shim to get the perfect alignment. We deferred this to later in the build process.

 

 



 

Since the fuse is on the gear, the antenna (2 comm, xpndr, ADS-B) can now mounted. It took a couple of hours worth of work to rivet the double plate and bolt the antennas. Feels good to get it done!

 



Riveting Bottom Skins for the Wings

Quite bummed about the avionics loss. While we wait to sort the issue, decided to go ahead and rivet the bottom skins on the wings. The idea was that it would be good to put the wings until the final assembly, thereby making me feel a little better with some concrete progress.

 

Here is our workbench. This job is a tedious two person endeavor and it took us almost the whole day to riven the bottom skins on both the wings (10 hrs).

 

 

Here is Glenn helping with the rivets. We alternated between bucking and hitting.



Almost done! Final thing to rivet the flaps hinges. The wings go on the cradle until we are ready to mount them (possibly after everything on the fuselage is near complete).

Progress towards the panel

This was supposed to be a pretty big week, as the panel and the components were supposed to arrive from the avionics. However, it appears that some of the panel components were lost en-route and now I am trying desperately to see what can be done about it.

Anyway, here is the progress for the last few days. Have been busy pulling wires across the fuselage as well routing the pitot/AOA/static tubing (5 hrs).

 

 

Also, threw the forward top skin on the fuselage to check the fit and get an idea of how things will be.  I ended up drilling the holes and deburring them as well (5 hrs).

 

Finally, also started to fabricate the double plate that would go with the comm antennas. Lots of small details that took fairly long to get right (5 hrs). The plates are now ready to be riveted to the bottom of fuselage. The riveting will happen once the airplane is on the gear.

 

Here is a snapshot of the panel that we received. Its missing switches and what not. I am not too happy with how this turned out. If there is a next time I would definitely choose a different vendor.





Turtle Deck Riveted

The build achieved a big landmark: we got the turtle deck riveted!! A great milestone to end 2012. Riveting the turtledeck is a two person job and Glenn helped quite a bit.

First, I spent a couple of hours fitting and clecoing top-skin to the turtle deck (2 hrs):

Next, Glenn and I got together. Glenn drove the rivet gun while I lay in the fuselage for almost 3 hrs!!! I did suffer with some musucular pain in the arms at night. It was all worth it. Time to rivet 3 hrs.

 

 

Here is a picture that Glenn took of me while I lay in the aft fuselage:

Building on QB Wings

The quickbuilt wings are already fairly complete. The key remaining tasks include: wiring the wings, adding the lights, Autopilot servo and pitot-tube, Plumbing pitot tube line, mounting the ailerons and flaps and finally riveting one of the skin on the wings.

 

The progress on the wings have been slow. While the primary focus has been the fuselage so far, few of the things have been accomplished in past few months.

 

First, mounting the heated pitot was tackled. This is dynon heated pitot with a mount that was bought from SafeAir (5 hrs). The wiring and the plumbing is also done.The mount still needs to be riveted to the bottom of the wing:

 



 

 

 

 

 The AP roll-servo is installed on the right wing (2hrs). One of the aileron pushrods was already fabricated by the previous builder. So it was first simply measured to verify the length:

 

 

One of the dreaded task in mounting the landing and taxi lights on the wings is the cutting out portions of perfectly good wings. Glenn, who is an artist in metal work, did those effortlessly. Taxi and landing lights are installed in left and right wings respectively (10 hrs).

 

 

I also decided to put in flop-tube in the left wing. Did not realize that this would take long. Thanks to Glenn, the flop tube and the fuel sender in the left wing was done (8 hrs).

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the wingtips are also being fitted. Aligning the edges of the wingtips, aileron and the flaps is important and the progress is slow and incremental (5 hrs):

 

 

The previous builder had mounted the aileron and flaps for left wing already. But the right wing needs to be taken care off (5 hrs):

 



The work on the wing will continue in parallel to the fuselage.

Fuselage Misc Items

The goal by end of the year is to get the turtle-deck riveted. So we are slowly making progress to get things done in the aft fuselage.

 

First, took care of the rubbing rudder cables by using adel clamps and plastic tubings (1 hr):

 

 



Note that the wiring for VOR cable is also taken care off (0.5 hrs) and is neatly tucked under and out of the way of rudder cables.

Similarly, the ELT wiring is tied neatly and routed through the fuselage below (1 hr). Once all this was done, we then started to take things apart in order to get ready for the turtle-deck riveting. Below you can see an image with Autopilot and the bell-crank disassembled.