Chap’s 13/22/25 – More wiring & painting

To start out this post right, I thought I’d show you my new environmentally friendly electric engine install with its high efficiency 3-bladed prop (no, NOT a Catto!).

You can see this will save me a ton of weight and I’ll probably be the first Long-EZ that has NO aft CG problem!  HA!

Ok, all kidding aside, I started off today writing out & organizing my required task list for the next couple of days.  I decided to continue the work that Marco and I had started on –the P5 connector (stick grip)– and knock out another 5-6 wires.

One of those wires in that connector is the wire that goes from the taxi light switch to the taxi light actuator relay in the nose (RL011).  I terminated the wire with a pin and then quickly realized that I was supposed to have TWO (2) wires in that pin terminal: 1) one going to relay RL011 and, 2) another going to the “TAXI LIGHT” LED indicator on my panel.

Being cheap and not wanting to waste a pin terminal, I decided that instead of cutting off the pin and reterminating the wire, that I would simply find the point on the wire that I had just run that was physically closest to where the taxi light ON LED indicator would be located.  I then stripped away the insulator on the wire I had just run, cut a new 22AWG brown wire with blue stripe, and solder-spliced it into place.

Since these wires both carry positive current, I covered the solder splice joint with a nice long piece of red shrink tube.

I then decided to terminate the other end of the brown & blue wire with a mini-connector that came with the LED indicator lights.  I realized that I had not finished identifying all the LED indicators, so I took a few minutes to update the info on my panel switches, indicator lights, LEDs, components page.  I then took another 15 minutes, cut up the labels I had printed out quite a while back and labeled each of the LED indicator lights.  With these minute tasks out of the way, I then terminated the brown & blue wire and slipped it into the mini terminal.

I then annotated the wiring label IDs on the new nose gear diagram for the Nose Gear Up Transit and Nose Gear Down Transit LED indicators.  I quickly printed out some labels for those wires, grabbed my stuff and took it all down to the shop to label and terminate these 4 wires.

After I cut these wires (that come out of the P2 connector) to a more workable length, I then labeled each one with the appropriate label [these were peel & stick labels since I’m currently out of the heat shrink labels].  I then terminated a socket onto the end of each wire and mounted them into their respective mini connectors.

I then tested out the gear up transit and gear down transit LED indicator lights as you can see in the very short video below (sorry, I didn’t get a shot of the LED indicator mini terminals).

I then spent a decent amount of time sanding down the perpetual painting project from hell: the nose tool box lid.  This thing has given me an amazing amount of grief in trying to simply get it painted black… to the point of being comical.  I also sanded down the GPS antenna cover that will sit atop the pilot head rest.  It too has presented a fair number of challenges.  I’m hoping over the next week to get these darn things knocked out!

Before I actually started sanding & priming the 2 items above I found about 6 pinholes that had crept back up on the surface of the aft NG30 cover, so I filled those with tiny dabs of Metal Glaze.  I then went on to sand and prime the lid and cover above.

Well, lo and behold there were a few more pinholes that I hadn’t noticed in the shop light, until I took the aft NG30 cover outside. I then whipped up a tiny bit more Metal Glaze and repeated the process (it’s very workable in 20 min, versus the long cure time for epoxy).

Finally, after messing around with the items above for a good bit of time, I was able to do a final EZ sand down of the aft NG30 cover, give it a good bath in Simple Green, and hit it with 3 coats of gloss white paint.

Tomorrow I have another friend coming over, so it may be a very light build day, which is ok because it will allow time for this stuff to cure longer.  I will push forward to finish all my nose-related components, including the electrical system stuff of course, to get them all knocked out so I can move forward on the wheel pants and upper nose build.

Chapter 22 – New Nose Gear System Success!

Hey folks!  I’m happy to report I was able to troubleshoot the issue with the nose gear system wiring.  It turned out to be an intermittent connection on a wire that goes to the down travel limit switch, causing the whole system to lock up in one direction.

Here’s a video showing the gear system tests.  I did the first test solo, then a few hours later I did another one with Marco, who happened to be visiting.

I’m super pleased with how the new nose gear system turned out.  Obviously relieved as well that it works.  Now I can press on with other panel forward tasks in preparing for the upcoming construction & glassing of the top side of the nose.

Chap’s 13/22/25 – A brick wall …

Slogging ‘er out!  Today I did the final sanding on the aft NG30 cover after the final application (hopefully) of Metal Glaze and epoxy wipes to clear up some minor blemishes & pin holes. I sanded down the cover, focused on dialing in the final surface prep for paint. Of course some of underlying filler broke through, but no worries since I hit it with a light colored primer.

I then applied 3 coats of white primer to lock in my surface prep work.  I’m sure there’s a good chance that I’ll have to do some more minor fills, and possibly even another coat of white primer, but as you can see it’s definitely looking more & more polished!

I did a bit more adminstrivia to verify the info I have on hand for my nose gear interfaces & integration with the electrical system.  With minor mods an inherent part of the process, it pays to take a half hour or so to make sure all my diagrams have been updated.

I then proceeded to finalize the wiring on the nose gear RCU P0 connector.  I then went the next step and prepped the main nose gear system power for connection to the E-Bus via a 10 Amp panel-mounted circuit breaker.

I then wired up the Emergency Gear Extend Switch that will be used in conjunction with the 1.2 Amp backup battery to get the gear down in case of an electrical system failure.

After finishing the actions above on the new nose gear system wiring, I took it down to the shop and installed the wiring harness, connectors, AEM box and RCU box into the plane. After double-checking (re-checking!) all the connections and pinouts, I fired up the new nose gear switch.  The gear actuator sprang alive and carried the gear to its fullest down (nose up) travel.  I then moved the gear switch to the up position (nose down) and I was met with only an audible click of the relay in the AEM box.  Hmmm . . .

So, I rechecked all my connections again.  Somehow I missed that I had inserted the big actuator power wires in the P0 connector in reverse… so I promptly fixed that issue.  I reran the gear to see if that fixed the issue and it did not, although it did give me another data point since my new issue was simply now reversed: I could get the gear to go up, but not down.  In addition, I was still met with just the audible click of a relay in the AEM box. I then removed the AEM box and the RCU box, took them upstairs and checked all the connections and circuit routes with a fine-tooth comb.  Nothing.

Thus, I end this evening in perplexed fashion trying to brainstorm on exactly what the issue could be.  Besides the reversed actuator wires that I quickly remedied, I can find nothing askew with the system…. so far.  I’ll work this tomorrow until get this thing going.

BTW, as you can tell, I did NOT get a chance to work on the taxi light extend/retract actuator system.

 

Chapter 13/22/25 – Electrons & paint

Well, I stated yesterday that I was planning on working on the taxi light actuator extend & retract system . . . that didn’t happen.  Today I focused on working to finish up the new nose gear system wiring.

I continued from where I left off last night and started by tying in the P2 connector to the mix.  The P2 connector resides at the right midpoint mounting bracket on the NG30 cover, and was the original connect point of Jack W’s AEX unit.  Now it has zero connections for the AEX function and is merely a break point for the wiring harness for making the removal of the NG30 cover EZ with just P2’s removal, and P0 on the RCU box. Besides an E-Bus fed power wire to the up/down limit switches, and an RCU box ground, the remainder of the P2 wires all deal with either LED indication of gear up/down transit, or AG6 warning annunciation for gear up and down.

I started by terminating the wires coming out of P1 into P2, installed the wires and closed up the A-side of the P2 connector with a cable clamp.  I then selected and terminated all the wires to the B-side P2 connector, and installed the cable clamp (center top of pic).

Also, as you can see I (prematurely) mounted the AEM D-Sub 15-pin back shell (chrome silver-looking connector).

I moved the pic below up for comparison to the one above.  As per Marc Z’s plan, I needed to solder a 560 Ohm resistor in series for the Laser Altimeter but forgot while I was building the aft side wiring harness for it.  No big issue, sez me, I’ll just solder it in so it’s nice and tucked away inside the AEM 15-pin D-sub back shell (ID: Connector J9).  Well, you got it… I forgot again!  So I disassembled the back shell and spent a good half hour soldering one tiny 560 Ohm resistor in place.  I insured I had heat shrink on the wire before I did my final solder, so was able to get a nice solid heat shrink piece in place over the soldered-in-place resistor & junctions.  I stuffed all the wires back into the AEM D-Sub back shell, closed ‘er up and was back on track.

In addition to soldering the resistor into place on the AEM J9 side B connector, I also terminated every wire that came out of this connector.  Six of 15 wires out of this D-Sub connector go to the RCU P0 connector, so I terminated those and plugged them into P0.

I also added another connector player into the mix at this point since this whole system is obviously controlled by the throttle mounted gear up/down switch.  This meant running, terminating and mounting the gear up/down switch wires into the Throttle handle P4 connector (black & white twisted pair to upper left corner in pic below).

After the first round of wiring on the new nose gear system above, with its subsequent & requisite diagram updates, I touched up the aft NG30 cover with just a couple dabs of metal glaze and gave it another good epoxy wiping to eliminate some more pin holes that popped up.  As you can see, I also slathered up the tool box lid to hopefully remove the minor surface irregularities that have been plaguing me in trying to get this one small part painted!

In addition, although taken quite a number of hours after I applied 3 coats of off-white primer, here’s a shot of the GNS480 GPS antenna cover that will sit atop my headrest. Since I had to go to town on it to remove the thick layers of my boat paint trial application, it too will need some TLC to smooth out the finish on it as well.  Regardless, the color you see below will pretty much be the final color for this piece.

Tomorrow I’ll round up all the correct color/size of wire to cut, terminate, and mount it into the RCU P0 connector.  This will finish up the wiring harness for the new nose gear.  I’ll also continue finishing the nose components (and the GPS antenna cover).  Finally, I do hope to sneak in some work on the taxi light actuator extend & retract system configuration.  Regardless, although it seems like it’s baby steps on a bunch of nit-noy stuff, I am getting closer –inch-by-inch– to knocking out my self-imposed to-do list before getting back to the “main” build.

 

Chap’s 13/22/25 – Sand-prime-paint, repeat

I started off today by sanding down the top of the tool box lid with a straight sanding board with 80 grit on it.  I took it down until it was level and then hit the top & sides a bit more lightly with 180 grit.  I then washed it up & prepped it for a reapplication of high build primer.

I tossed around the idea of just going back in with paint, but it’s going to need a couple of rounds of TLC for the surface to be ready for paint.  That being said, I just hit it with one medium coat and called it good.

I then spent over 1.5 hours on prepping the aft NG30 cover for final primer.  The top left forward corner and lower left edge where it meets the NG30 plate were both a bit shallow, so I added in some glazing putty to fill it in.  I use the same stuff I did when I was building my custom motorcycle: Evercoat’s Metal Glaze.  It works like a dream… mixes fast and creamy, and fills very smoothly.  It also sands great as well.

I filled one depression on the right side of the cover, and the upper forward corner area on the right as well.

After sanding down the filler and blending it in, I then hit the aft NG30 coat with 2 more coats of primer.

If you look closely, you can see the bleed through of the filler to the surface.  I’ll lightly sand the cover one more time, then most likely hit just these areas again with primer before final paint.  It may seem like I’m being overly fussy, but just like in composites, the prep in painting is really what takes the longest.  The final few coats of base coat (or final here) is the culmination of a lot of prep.  I just want to get this finish dialed into an acceptable level (yes, it doesn’t help that I’ve done body work & painting before… in that I’m sure it makes me a bit more picky) so every time I look at it I don’t get a gnawing feeling that I left a half hour more work on the table to clear up a minor, yet glaring, imperfection.

I was going to use a white primer on both the NG30 covers, then simply clear coat them. However, the primer I picked up was just not bright enough white for me to go on as the final color.  So while I was out I picked up some actual paint (vs primer) and will just go with that, like I did on the tool box.

I then sanded down the boat paint trial application off the GPS antenna cover that will crown my headrest, and also prepped the forward NG30 cover.  I hit the GPS antenna cover with a couple rounds of primer while I final coated the forward NG30 cover with 2 coats of gloss white.  I’m using gloss on a few of the internal nose components (the GPS antenna cover will not get gloss) just to make them pop a bit and stand out from the otherwise mass of matt finish that will be the main finish in the nose compartment and cockpit.

I was doing some research online about Rustoleum paint, and ran across something that made sense to me: since rattle can paint & primer doesn’t incorporate a reducer (like auto paint), it takes a few days to really off-gas and cure to a good point.  I noticed this dynamic on the lower tool box, thus I figured I would leave this stuff alone for at least 24-30 hours before working on it again.

I set my sights back on my new nose gear wiring since the diagram was full of chicken scratches, notes, marker highlights, etc.  One task that really needed to get completed was the deconfliction of P1 connector pinouts.  You see, when I rewickered Jack’s original Molex connector and rewired the nose gear system through an AMP CPC connector for P1, I changed the pinout numbers.  When Marc Zeitlin released his wiring diagram, he logically used Jack’s original pinout numbers.  When I redrew the new wiring diagram, and merged Jack’s and Marc’s systems, I used the original connector pinout numbers instead of mine. This required me to go back tonight and re-label the P1 connector on the diagram with my pinout numbers vs Jacks, since I’m not going to pull the gear actuator side (B side) of the P1 connector apart to re-terminate it.  It also required me to pull and re-pin the P1 connector (A side) terminals using the correct numbers.

However, I did build and add a jumper wire to pins 2 & 8 to allow me to use the P1 connector for routing of a ground wire coming out of the RCU.  Doing this simply cleaned up the wire bundle and actually streamlined the wire routing.

I then soldered two 22AWG wires close to the terminal pin on each of the actuator motor power wires on the P1-A connector for the gear up & down transit LED indicators.  After I soldered the wires in place I heat shrank the soldered joints to secure the wires & junction. I then finalized the A side of the P1 AMP CPC connector, covered the wires that traverse to the RCU’s P0 connector with a mesh cover, cut the remaining wires that will terminate into the P2 connector (upper left in pic below) to length and then snapped a shot of it all.

Along with the main nose gear wiring diagram, I also updated the P0, P1 and J9 connector pinout diagram pages.  Tomorrow I plan on working on the taxi light actuator extend & retract mechanism to get that knocked out.

 

Chapter 13/25 – New age art . . . ?

Or pinholes?  Ahh, it’s the latter my friends!

I have to admit when I first pulled these pics up on my phone I was wondering what the heck I had taken a picture of…

But, alas, since I sanded down through the actual epoxy wipes into the micro layer on each side of the cover in its never-ending contouring cycle, I created (or uncovered) some pin holes… which of course is the main things the epoxy wipes eliminate.

So, before doing some electrical diagram administrivia this morning, I did some quick epoxy wipes in a few targeted areas on the aft NG30 cover.  Like I had stated before, today will be a light build day, so this will be all I have to report.

 

Chapter 13/25 – Primed aft NG30 cover

Although I didn’t get a lot done today I think it was fairly significant.  I started off by sanding the entire aft NG30 cover down in preparation for priming.  That was nearly an hour effort in and of itself.  It’s interesting how “straight” these components can look to the naked eye, but once you apply micro and sand it down, then even the subsequent sanding after a few coats of epoxy, you see how off it was from the beginning.  No worries of course because that’s exactly what the finishing process is all about.

After I sanded it, I washed it down with Simple Green and set it outside on my truck tailgate in the sun to dry thoroughly.

I then took the aft NG30 cover around to my side yard and hit it with 3 coats of primer.

Here’s a couple more shots after I brought it back into the garage.

I then wet sanded the tool box lid with some 500 grit sandpaper.  It looked like all the imperfections were gone, so I cleaned it up, and printed out a label for it (which I mistakenly roughed up just barely with the 500 grit sandpaper).

Labels are notoriously difficult to clear coat, so I misted it a couple of times before hitting it with a full application of clear coat.

However, I think unlike the regular Rustoleum paint with its “few minutes” between coats, the clear coat has a quicker flash time in between coats (my current guess, but I’ll have to research more) because what started out as minor workable orange peeling turned into cracks that would put those in the Gobi Desert to shame!  In short, adding the label and clear coat Round 1 was a GIANT FAIL!

Ok, lessons learned and back to the drawing board . . .

Tomorrow I’ll try to epoxy wipe some pin holes on the aft NG30 cover before heading out to my EAA meeting.   But besides that, it will be a light build day since mid-afternoon on I’ll be hanging out with some friends.

 

Chapter 22 – Taxi light mini-actuator

I started off today by cleaning up my rather unorthodox layup for the area in-between the taxi light flanges.

I cleaned up the taxi light mini-actuator mounting flanges.

I then drilled and mounted the battery tray mounting flanges for bracket and screw for the mini-actuator.

I then drew up the outline for the rectangular lightening hole in the battery tray.  This lightening hole will also allow me to view the battery strap and manipulate its velcro tabs.

I then drilled holes in the corners of the battery tray rectangular lightening hole.

I pulled out the Fein saw and got prepared to cut . . .

I then took a quick selfie to show the FAA that I’m the one actually building this bird!

I then cut out the center rectangular lightening/viewing hole in the battery tray.

I then drilled 2 more 1″ lightening holes on each end of the battery tray.

I then mounted the taxi light mini-actuator to the battery tray.  Out of curiosity I weighed the entire assembly pictured below and it came out to 2.9 oz.

I then did a test fit with the whole setup in the nose battery compartment.

I had removed the taxi light cover to fill a couple of holes on the lower left side that I had mis-drilled for the mounting screws.  Before I remounted it, I sanded out a small rounded half-moon shaped indention on the top aft to provide clearance for the power wires.  I then decided, before remounting the taxi light cover, to go ahead and drill the vent holes on each side and the bottom/aft of the cover.

I then drilled 3 vent holes on each side.

To test the initial actuator geometry that I figured out, I cut a test bracket out of a spare big piece of 6061 angle aluminum.

I don’t have any pics, but I messed around with the taxi light actuator and lever configuration for quite a while.  Unfortunately, I think my initial 1″ throw estimate for my mini-actuator is about 0.4″ too short.  Thus, I have to now start employing brain power –which I really was trying to avoid– to figure out how to implement some sort of mechanical trickery to turn the actuator throw from 1″ into 1.4″.  I have a few ideas, but tomorrow I’m going to spend my time finalizing the finishes on the NG30 covers and tool box and let my ideas germinate a bit.

 

Chap 13/25 – Paint starts now!

Ok, well, the paint starts in a bit.  Actually, the first thing I did today was cut out another battery tray lower flange out of G10 Garolite that will be paired up with the existing right flange –with a gap– to make up a composite U-channel for mounting the taxi light mini- actuator (pics later in this post show the configuration).

To add a little added strength for these actuator mount flanges, I added a foam spacer in the middle between them about 0.35″ high.  I micro’d the foam into place and then the new G10 mounting flange.

I then laid up 3 plies of BID on the inboard side of the new G10 mounting flange.  The popsicle sticks in the pics below are to keep the spacing correct between the 2 flanges, since the existing flange has just a bit of angle due to the glass configuration in the battery compartment’s lower channel.

I took another shot of the tool box lid and forward NG30 cover for posterity’s sake, just before I sanded them for primer coating.

I then sanded the tool box lid to prep it for primer.

And then did the same for the forward NG30 cover.

Here’s the tool box lid and forward NG30 cover in GRAY (although it almost looks white) primer.

I didn’t get a pic for posterity’s sake for the lower tool box body, so here it as after I primered it.

Again, although this looks white, the lower tool box body really is in gray primer here after a quick sand down and re-wash (I use Simple Green to wash my parts, a trick I learned when painting motorcycles).  This pic shows it right before I shot it with black paint

I then shot the tool box body black with 2 coats.

This is a couple of hours later than the pic above.  You can see the paint leveled out quite a bit as it cured, and it really does look good.  It’s not perfect, and if it were an external part or in constant view I would probably wet sand it and shoot it one more time, or clear coat it.  But this tool box is going into the nose, with the body mostly covered by the battery and the lid, so I’m going to call this good and press on.

I actually did the following while the tool box paint was curing.  I cleaned up the layup on the added inboard battery tray flange for mounting the taxi light mini-actuator.

Here’s a quick mockup shot showing how the taxi light mini-actuator will look in relation to the battery tray mounting flanges. [NOTE: To be clear, the battery tray is turned up on its aft side so that my fingers in this pic would be toward the front of the battery compartment].

If you aren’t confused, good!  But to show further what I’m talking about here’s a good representative shot showing pretty much how it will look when the mini-actuator is installed onto the battery tray mounting flanges (I actually took these 2 shots for Marco to explain to him what I was up to…].

For the NG30 covers, being much larger center pieces when the nose is opened up, I decided to clear coat them from the get go.  Still, nothing too fancy.  I grabbed some flat white Rustoleum primer and am using that for the base coat.  After the base coat cures, I’ll wet sand it and then I’ll hit it with a few rounds of clear.  Depending on how that turns out, I may do one final wet sanding and another coat or two of clear (sorry the pic quality, it seems my phone has been having issues focusing lately.  I think I’m going to have to switch back to the camera ….)

I had to do a fair amount of sanding after the first round of primer on the tool box lid, so I went ahead and re-primered it with another couple of coats.  After I good amount of time I picked it up in ham-fisted fashion to see how it looked, and disturbed the primer on the top side.  So, I hit it again with a good wet coat of primer on the top and let it cure some more.  After a bit of time went by, I threw it under a heat lamp for a couple of hours to get it nice and cured.  I then re-sanded it, gave it a Simple Green bath and then hit it with 3 coats of black.  FYI, this black is primer + gloss black paint mix.

I did do one more thing that I don’t have a pic of before I called it a night: I laid up 2 plies of glass in between the taxi light mini-actuator’s 2 mounting tabs on the battery tray.  I then peel plied the layup.  Tomorrow I’ll trim & clean up the layup, as well as prep the big daddy of them all for primer & then paint: the aft NG30 cover!

 

Chapter 13/25 – Finishing nose parts

Today was a long build day overall, but not an overly productive one.  The reason being that today was essentially epoxy wipe day for the tool box . . .

And the aft NG30 cover.

After prepping the parts late this morning, I applied the first epoxy wipe (using West) and then waited 2 – 2.5 hours and then added the next coat, waited and then repeated.  I applied a total of 4 coats of epoxy before letting them alone to cure overnight.

In other news, I cleaned up and shaped the right battery tray flange in preparation for adding a tab (smaller flange) just inboard of the right flange to allow me to mount the taxi light mini-actuator to the battery tray via these right side flanges.

With the aft NG30 cover and tool box body epoxy wipes curing, I checked them one last time and then called it a night.