Chapter 22 – Sloggin’ it out!

Posted on 27 November, 2016 by Airdog

Today I started out by finalizing my pitot-static system plan. I still need to make some phone calls tomorrow to some of system vendors to ensure I’ve got the most optimized configuration for hooking up the pitot-static lines on their respective systems, but beyond that I’m pretty much done. I’ll be dropping an order to Stein here soon and it will include the remainder of the parts I need to complete my pitot-static system install.

In addition the pitot-static system, I also reviewed & assessed my recently added Triparagon connectors that should allow me to remove the instrument panel fairly easily. I found a few more issues that made me add the Trio autopilot’s wiring harness to the list of components that require me to simply remove the connector. The main issue with this harness is that there are shielded wires that run all the way back to the roll servo. Clearly these are not easily removed, and I’m sticking to Stein’s advice (because I agree!) to NOT add connectors in the middle of shielded wire runs. Thus, this requires me to remove the Trio autopilot’s connector and leave it in the plane when I remove the instrument panel. In short, I made a lot more progress on the concept of running all the instrument panel components’ wires through connectors to allow EZ removal of the panel.

Later on, I figured I would get some wiring done while I was watched football. Since I had just had the Trio autopilot wiring harness out, I decided to re-terminate the roll servo pins with AMP CPC pins vs Molex, and add the AMP CPC connector housing. I’m not messing with the pitch servo since it needs to be cut significantly shorter and I need to get a good measurement for that.

The pic below shows how the connector pins looked before I started. Again, I cut the Molex pins off and reterminated the wires with AMP CPC pins and then mounted the connector housing for the roll servo cable.

Continuing on, perhaps a little ironically I removed the 9-pin D-Sub connector from the roll TRIM servo and swapped it out with a 4-pin Molex connector I got from Stein. As you probably know, I’m not a huge fan of Molex connectors, but I figure any roll trim servo failure is fairly benign in the operational realm of flying a Long-EZ.

I started by cutting off the D-Sub connector as close to the connector housing as possible. In both pics above and below you can see the 4-pin Molex connector housing.

I then reterminated the wires with mini-Molex pins.

And then snapped the pins in place into the Molex connector housing. BTW, this connector is J6. I’ll of course wait to terminate & add wires to the other half of the connector when I actually install the roll trim servo.

My last action of the evening was to rewire the wiring harness for the TruTrak ADI. As I was taking inventory of all the wires, which included digging into the manuals, I noted that the wires on the TT ADI’s wiring harness connector were simply HUGE! Although the installation manual calls out for 22 AWG wiring, these wires range from 14 to 18 gage… way too big! Since the wires were soldered into the 9-pin D-Sub connector, I simply created an entire new TT ADI wiring harness D-Sub connector with crimped pins. I of course used 22 AWG wires for the new harness.

Here’s a closer shot of the new TT ADI wiring harness (red, black & yellow) that will replace the old one (white wires).

Tomorrow I’ll finish the plan for the wiring, finalize the positions of the airspeed switches and other Triparagon cross shelf mounted components (“CrackerJack parts!”) and attempt to get the Triparagon cross shelf mounted. I’ll most likely order the pitot-static parts as well after talking to a few equipment vendors.

Chapter 22 – Unraveling the mystery

Posted on 26 November, 2016 by Airdog

Over the past few days during the Thanksgiving holiday I’ve actually been getting a fair amount of electrical system documentation, planning & system design work done. Some things I’ve done, like taking the time out to figure out the wiring & pinouts for the Infinity pilot control stick buttons, switches & wires, is pretty much a known quantity and simply needed to be completed & checked off the to-do list.

But the pitot-static was a different animal entirely. I had some pieces parts on hand, but I really needed to get educated on pitot-static systems before starting out. During my research I ran across a very nicely detailed post on the VAF forum from Paul Dye (editor of KitPlanes mag) concerning his pitot-static system. In the post he not only described his pitot-static system, and the advice that Stein (from SteinAir) –who we know is a genius on all things panel related– gave him, but how he also devised his pitot-static system, and in turn his electrical system, to allow for the panel to be removed EZily. Hmmm?!

I played around with designing my pitot-static system with the intent to get it documented in PowerPoint and on paper, but have not gotten around to either yet. Although I pretty much have the pitot-static system designed in chicken-scratch form & in my head, as you can see below (the diagram below was summarily stolen from a guy asking questions on his p-s system that posted it to VAF…I’m merely modifying it to suit my needs!). But the panel removal idea –one that Marco and I have discussed non-specifically many times– began to gnaw at me more & more each passing day over these past few days. It was definitely germinating in my brain. One overriding reason is that if I could pull it off, it could literally change the structure & process of how I build the nose of my plane.

So today I spent the entire day taking inventory and listing out every single wire that comes off the panel mounted avionics, instruments, warning lights, buttons, switches, etc. I determined what connectors would need to stay connected, and which ones must be disconnected for the panel to be removed. I created a whole new series of connector designators for the D-Sub and Molex series connectors: J1 – Jn, as compared to the current series of the AMP CPC connector series: P1 – Pn.

After hours of collecting this data, and determining that it could be done, then I got to the business of updating the majority of my electrical diagrams to reflect these new intermediate connectors. I determined a couple of things, at least initially:

The majority of switches will be on separate sub panels that will be removed from the panel before it is removed.
The Avidyne P1002 communications connector and the Dynon intercom connectors will have to be removed and stay on the plane side due to the multiple cross/inter- connects to components and the shielded wiring.
Given the factors above, I determined the number of pins required could be provided with 37-pin (J4) and 15-pin (J3) D-sub connectors, and utilizing the 19-pin AMP CPC connector (P6) that I had previously planned on using for the GIB stick grip. These should give me enough pins for the panel wiring, with some extra slots. The AMP CPC (P6) and 15-pin D-Sub (J3) will handle primarily power & ground wires, while the 37-pin D-Sub (J4) will handle primarily signal (a ton of RS232) wires.

Of course I need to confirm and refine my plan, but with this in hand and the finalizing of the pitot-static routing plan, I’ll be able to finalize the component placement on the Triparagon, get the top cross shelf and side mounting tabs cut and lightening holes drilled. I’ll also be able to roll these new factors into the design of the top nose structure and see how it effects the forward canopy skirt. Tomorrow will be a light build day, but I do plan on getting a few hours more done on this stuff.

Chapter 14/23 – An Enigma . . .

Posted on 25 October, 2016 by Airdog

Before I get to the “enigma” part of this story, I wanted to show you one piece of what Marco & I were into last night. We started off out in the shop and of course had a myriad of discussions on all things Long-EZ. He brought some Long-EZ seat cushions he has and we tried them out both in the front & back seat. This visit is the first time Marco has sat in my fuselage, and he did note the difference in feel between my 1.4″ wider cockpit vs. his stock flying plane (he widened his build Long-EZ fuselage 2″).

The more exciting part of his visit is that right before we went to dinner I hooked up a 12v battery to charge while we were out. Then, when we returned, we fired up the GRT Mini-X EFIS for the first time ever. Marco was curious to see how it looked and requested that we take a look, so we messed around with the screens, menus, features, etc. for a good while. We didn’t take any pics last night, but below is some of what we saw with just power and the GPS antenna hooked up to the Mini-X.

Primary Flight Display (PFD):

Navigation Maps (Track up & North up):

HSI:

Today I started out by lifting the fuselage nose to get the longerons to a level 0°.

Longerons at a level 0°.

I then checked the firewall and it was dialed right in at 90°, perpendicular to the longerons.

I calculated the thickness of the firewall (since I haven’t glassed on all the BID yet) at 0.355″ and simply rounded that up to 0.36″ and added it to the 1.6″ for the part of the engine mount extrusion sticking out aft of the firewall for the engine mount to attach to.

After removing the firewall, I mocked up the engine mount extrusions (remember, the top ones are a mixture of 4130 steel on the left side and 2024 aluminum on the right) and then checked the WA16 Spruce wedge spacers. Since my fuselage is just slightly more curved, I cut the WA16s 0.4″ at their widest point vs the stock 0.3″. This of course turned out to be a wasted effort since even though the fuselage is more football shaped than stock, the plans 0.3″ wide wedge spacer dimension is still the correct size. Ahhh, so I did even more cutting and sanding to get these things thinned down.

I then clamped and set the engine mount into place, only attached to the upper engine mounts for the initial look.

This is where the ENIGMA part comes into play. I have no idea why, since I thought I was Uber diligent in my measuring of all fuselage dimensions at the beginning of this build, but the face of my firewall is setting at about FS 125.4 vs the plan’s FS 125.0. I have to admit I was remiss in double-checking the firewall dimensions when I installed the CS spar into the fuselage, since I assumed that my spar notches were good due to the fact that I did re-check their measurements. Plus, the firewall fit flush and appeared aligned, which it is . . . just 0.4″ aft where the face of it should be.

The real affect, although over-comeable, is that the top set of engine mount brackets are setting at FS 134.5 vs FS 134.2. 0.3″ may not seem significant, but it certainly is to the W&B when you’re talking about the mounting of the 250+ pound engine, the heaviest component on this entire craft.

My initial concern was that if I simply move the mount closer (which will require some trimming of the upper engine mount stems) that it would negatively effect the clearance of the forward-mounted engine components. But since I’m using Electronic Ignitions in both magneto mounts, they won’t require the forward space that Slick mags do. Thus, if I trim a hair over 0.3″, and mount the engine with it’s normal engine mount stem to firewall spacing, I should be very close to spot on with the FS 134.2 engine mount setting.

[BTW, the measurement below was taken from the face of F28… so, 28 + 106.5 = 134.5].

This shows the gap between the end of the right longeron and the upper right engine mount stem. Note that if the engine mount stem were left at the length in the pic below, it would actually be embedded into the firewall. The aft face of the firewall will be just forward of the double horizontal extrusion plate shown just underneath the engine mount stem.

Tomorrow I’ll actually trim the engine mount (too late tonight due to noise) and continue to work the engine mount extrusions. I do plan on getting the layups & upper engine mounts in tomorrow. Also, as you can see –at least for the time being– I’m pretty much done with Chapter 16, Controls. Finally, there’s some important info concerning my upcoming build schedule in the project update post.

Chapter 17/22 – All Electric…

Posted on 21 October, 2016 by Airdog

This morning I had to run over to get a new muffler on my truck, which ended up taking half the day. I went to a cafe and had some coffee while I waited for the truck to get finished, and while there I made up my to-do task sheet for the day. Unfortunately, I only got the first 2 items on the list done, each of course taking a bit longer than I had anticipated. By the time early evening rolled around, I punted and simply went to dinner & a movie with a buddy of mine, so not a lot done on the actual build of the plane today.

My first task was to prep the connection wiring and replace the connector on the Trio Pro Pilot roll trim servo somewhat like I had done with the pitch servo. The main difference here though is that the roll servo will reside in the engine compartment, not the cockpit, and thus will be subjected to higher temps and more of the elements. I wanted to completely protect this wiring and replace the Molex connector with an AMP CPC connector.

I started by removing the Molex connector.

And then removed the 4 individual Molex connector pins.

I added a couple of pieces of heat shrink, a flexible wire stay, and crimped 4 new AMP pins onto each of the wires. Technically, in the same way that as the pitch servo, there are 2 ground wires that share the ground pin connector: one to the internal electronics, and one for the case ground.

As you can see, I also crimped a ring terminal in place for the case ground wire. In addition, I snapped each AMP pin into the AMP CPC connector housing and closed it all up.

And a closer shot of the final AMP CPC connector configuration for the Trio Pro Pilot roll servo.

My second (and final) electrical-related task of the day was to terminate the 24AWG wires coming out of the RAC servo that I’m using in my roll trim system. I decided to try a little trick that Bob Nuckolls has for modifying a DB9 connector to use as an inline type connector.

Below you can see I’ve already removed the metal housing from the female side of the DB9 connector.

I then had to remove the tabs from the male side, but this being my first time making one of these I removed a bit too much of the flange, so when resoldering the sides back together I had to try to bridge the gap, which if you’ve used solder you know it’s not a good gap filler or bridging material. I later cleaned off some of this excess solder but pressed on after I took this pic to get this thing completed.

I guess I should have taken an interim pic of the individually terminated wires with the D-sub pins, but here’s the final connector after I added some E6000 adhesive for essentially a potting material & strain relief on the back side of the connector.

The female side of the connector will get D-sub sockets terminated onto the wires and with the wires terminated, all of this will get heat-shrinked together to complete the final connection of the 2 connector halves.

For what is essentially a 4-pin connector I’m not really sure if I’d use one of these again. I think for the future I’ll look for a more elegant off-the-shelf solution to use for the RAC servo wiring, or any smaller gauged wires for that fact.

I’ll be heading to the AOPA fly-in at the Frederick, MD airport tomorrow, so won’t get anything done until maybe early evening… we’ll see!

Chapter 9, 13, 16 – A myriad of stuff

Posted on 19 October, 2016 by Airdog

I started today off by peeling the peel ply off the autopilot pitch servo mounting pad & doing some minor cleanup around the edges of the layup.

I then mounted the pitch servo with the control rod in place to show what it will pretty much look like when installed operationally.

I took the pic below with my phone and included it here because it shows the actual color much better, which is a rich yam orange vs. a sweet potato gold showing up in the pics above.

I had to run out and run some errands for a few hours, but when I returned home I went to work on fixing the “crease” that was running down the middle of my Infinity stick grip. Something was misaligned inside to cause a noticeable edge of one half of the stick off from the other.

The first thing I did was to “crimp” the adapter I bought from JD at Infinity to more closely encircle the adapter I made. The second thing I did was reroute some of the internal wires that I think simply had nowhere to go so was bunching up a hair and knocking the halves just slightly askew.

Still, it was the proverbial “herding cats” game but I finally got it. I then torqued the screws down to keep it that way, only to read a few minutes later in the instructions: “Don’t over tighten the screws!” . . . oh, well. They are tight!

So far the problem is solved, but I’ll have to play around with it for a while to see if it regresses before I add blue Loctite to the threads.

For those of you more esoteric types that like more pastel colors, like turquoise, I offer you this . . . I call it, “Nouveau Grip.”

So, there I was . . . it was late afternoon, and the days are getting shorter. Also, this warm weather spell is supposed to end tomorrow so I figured I had better get outside and do some saw work . . . er, uh, I mean some milling work! Ok, milling work on a poor man’s milling machine, aka “a table saw.”

I bought a 2.5″ wide x 0.5″ thick bar of 2024 from ACS specifically to make my inboard mounts for the wheel pants. I did a quick measurement of one of the inboard axle bolts & plate, then marked off the 2024 bar stock for cutting.

I stole the idea for these from Bernie Siu, who ended up with this style after 2 prior iterations of inboard wheel pant mounts, including the original style called out by Gary Hertlzer in the instructions. These are bit more “elegant” in style, and if all plays out the way I intend, the horizontal “bar” will be able to be used to jack up the gear leg to change tires, etc.

I want to point out that these are in the ROUGH stage, since, as I mentioned before, I had to use the poor man’s milling machine to get these ginned up.

Here’s a profile shot of the wheel pant inboard mounting brackets. I thinned the top and bottom plate material down to 1/8″ by cutting into the 1/2″ bar 3 times, an 1/8″ at a time (for a total of a 3/8″ deep cut).

The shot below is more to show the other 2 pieces I cut from the 2024 bar stock, and that’s a 3/8″ x 3/8″ x 1.2″ plug that will go into the end of a 1/2″ x 1/2″ 6061 square tube that I’m using as a crossbar for the GIB top seatbelt straps. Since riding in the back of Marco’s Long-EZ, although not bad at all, I can see where there could easily be a need for folks to bring the top seatbelt straps in closer together.

My bar will be secured in 3 places: on each side with the forward engine extrusion bolt into the CS spar as the original plans upper seatbelt bracket tabs were. And then in the middle of the bar into a hard point in the CS spar. These 2024 square plugs will reinforce the hollow tubing for the 1/4″ AN4 bolt that will get installed vertically through each side of this bar to hold it and also, more importantly, secure the engine mount extrusion in place to the CS spar.

With my metal cutting tom-foolery behind me, I started working on a quasi-requirement of Trio for the autopilot. In the manual it states to not have the autopilot act as the hard stops for the aircraft control system. Although we don’t have hard control stops in most of our Long-EZs, I decided I would do what I could and put in a stop for full aft stick.

I had originally thought I would put a stop in both sides, under each torque tube offset arm. I may still do that, but for now I decided to just do it under the offset arm where the pressure is getting applied from the control system: the right side. Nonetheless, when I decided this, I had already marked the area on the bottom of the canard where the finish needed to be removed to get to bare glass (below). I did this for both left & right sides.

Here’s a couple shots with the finish removed, and with the glass sanded and ready for glassing.

Here’s a long view with the elevator control hard stop in place. The elevators are set at just a skooch over 30° at about 30.5°, just to make sure the full operational limit is obtained.

In addition to Trio’s requirements (which apparently I’m meeting only 25% of! …. actually, I talked to Chuck Busch and he said all was good with my install plan!), I found an old CP (CP# 48 pg 4) that stated some canard pilots were having issues rotating if they pulled full aft stick and the elevators went past 30° down. This gets into the backside of the lift curve and interestingly may not get the nose of the plane off the ground. As per the CP, in this scenario one would be “on the “back side” of the lift curve, lift is less than maximum and the elevator is creating lots of drag.” Marco was having some of these same type of issues on his plane, and found that NOT going full aft stick on takeoff was giving him better liftoff. Of course I’ll test it out and adjust the stop as necessary IAW this CP.

Here’s a closer shot of the elevator control stop.

I then floxed the elevator control stop in place, made some flox fillets and glassed each side with 1 ply of BID initially. Then, since I had enough epoxy, I added one more ply of BID to the inboard side since my first NON-prepregged piece of BID decided to go just a tiny bit wonky on me. I then peel plied the glass intersection on the canard surface.

Later in the evening, I reinstalled the Infinity stick grip in the arm rest and tested it out. Alles ist gut! . . . so far.

I realized the other night that my initial estimations on where the rudder pedals needed to be mounted were way off! I guess I’m just a lot taller than I remember (ha!) because twice I had to remount the rudder pedals farther forward. In addition, the space in the nose is TIGHT, and I may have to lop off the inboard tubes that make up the “T” on the rudder pedals. Currently, it’s just too difficult to set my feet along side them as if I were in the relaxed cross country mode, then bring my feet back onto the pedals. My shoes snag on that top pedal crossbar and make it a real hassle to get my feet back on the pedal. Since it’s so narrow on each side anyway, I doubt if lopping off that extra metal tubing will affect my ability to mash these pedals when needed!

With a really good idea of my pedal geometry now, I decided to re-attack the placement of the Atkinson pitch trim assembly. After mocking it up in different spots for a bit, I pretty much concluded that it has to go where I had planned for it to, except with one minor modification: it most likely will have to be mounted at an angle with the actuator motor leaning from 30-45° inboard to clear the upper curvature of the nose.

Tomorrow I have to get some work done on my truck, then run some more errands. I plan on finalizing some more of this perpetual odd-n-end stuff and hopefully move onto doing stuff that’s actually covered in the plans!

Chapter 16/17/22 – AP Pitch Servo

Posted on 18 October, 2016 by Airdog

Today was all about getting the Trio Pro Pilot Autopilot pitch servo mounting bracket glassed in place on the right fuselage side wall. Since I prepped everything last night, it allowed me to just jump into the fray this morning.

I started by cleaning off the Clickbonds with Acetone & then adding a dab of 5-min glue to the bottom of each one. I had them in place in the mounting bracket to allow me to align the Clickbonds to the actual pitch servo bottom mounting plate when I glue them to the sidewall.

I then lined up the whole assembly and pressed the Clickbonds into place onto the fuselage sidewall. I held it there by hand for about 3 minutes to ensure the 5-minute glue set up. I kept the bottom edge of the mounting bracket aligned with my angled alignment mark that I had made on the side wall, and my left-right alignment was my arrow on the lower left corner of the mounting bracket that aligns with the intersection of the slanted alignment mark and a point 7-3/4″ aft of F22.

After a few more minutes I pulled off the mounting bracket from the Clickbonds, and after a few double-checks on their alignment, let them cure. The middle dark area just to the right of the left row of Clickbonds is actually a 2-ply BID layup I threw on the side wall to help fill in the elevation gap between the uber 4-ply BID that secures F22, and the sidewall just aft of all that thick BID pad [not a big deal, but perhaps the install could have been better engineered by the Trio gang to avoid this 4-ply BID pad-to-sidewall transition area?….still, no big worries].

As the Clickbonds cured I whipped up some epoxy and wet out the prepregged 3 plies of BID. I then used the mounting bracket to mark the BID to allow me to cut small holes in it for the 6 Clickbond access holes.

I then whipped up some flox and applied it around each Clickbond base and in the transition area to provide a straight foundation for the mounting bracket.

I then laid up the prepregged 3 plies of BID. While the prepreg plastic was still on, I taped up the bottom of the pitch servo for anti-gunk protection and used the actual servo to press in on the flox to attain the exact amount of flox angle required for the servo to sit flat against the sidewall.

I then pulled the peel ply top plastic, applied a bunch more flox and then set the mounting bracket into place. I then laid up the 2-ply BID prepreg over the mounting bracket. Again, with the prepreg plastic still on, I once more set the actual servo on the Clickbonds and applied firm pressure to set the mounting bracket, flox and BID plies into place.

I then pulled the prepreg plastic and peel plied the entire layup.

Today was a short work day since I helped an Air Force buddy that just arrived into the area move some furniture. Tomorrow I’ll pull the peel ply and clean up this layup. Then I’ll mount the pitch servo. I also need to reset the mounting bracket inside the Infinity stick grip because the plastic handle halves are misaligned just a bit, and it’s creating a ridge down the center of the grip stick that will annoy the snot out of me if I have to fly with it! With that, I’ll continue to work the main fuselage/cockpit flight controls as much as possible until I can’t continue (i.e. no firewall aft controls) and I expect to be getting back to the wheel pants next week.

Chapter 22 – Trio A/P pitch servo wiring

Posted on 16 October, 2016 by Airdog

I didn’t really get anything major done today on the Long-EZ build. I did watch a fair amount of football and did a good bit of research for tomorrow’s build activities.

One thing I decided to knock out was swapping out the wiring connector on the Trio Pro Pilot Autopilot from a Molex connector –which by now you probably know that I don’t care for– to an AMP CPC connector.

I started by removing the individual Molex pins from the Molex connector housing.

I then cut off the Molex pins from each wire.

I added a couple of pieces of shrink tubing both at the strain relief point coming out of the servo housing, and another piece that will end up close to the connector. This latter piece will not only serve to help with strain relief, but also to maintain a good bit of twist in the wires for dampening any errant electromagnetic radiation.

I had spent a good half hour confirming & updating the wiring schema from the Trio Pro Pilot manual. However, I didn’t confirm my original claim of pins vs. sockets on my sheet. My bad since I went with pins here, when I should have installed sockets.

No big deal. Normally pins or sockets wouldn’t matter, but since my pin side connector body has a flange on it, I had originally meant for it to stay hard-mounted in the aircraft, while the servo side connector would be removable (no flange). It will mean just a slight modification to the mount on the side wall of the fuselage, meaning although this connector will be screwed in place it will also be easily removable. I’d much rather do that than cut off perfectly good (and crimped!) pins and waste time & money for a slight re-tweaking of the P3 connector installation. I mean, after all, how often am I really going to be removing & installing the pitch trim servo after it’s initially installed? (not many I hope!)

Tomorrow I plan on focusing on finalizing the elevator control tube installation (flight controls) and the mounting of the pilot control stick grip. In addition I plan on prepping the install of the autopilot pitch servo (above). I’ll also most likely do some minor tweaks to the canard filler pieces as well.

Chapter 22 – Why Vic?! . . . Why???

Posted on 28 July, 2016 by Airdog

It’s funny to me how I can ponder on something for a fair amount of time and then as if by putting mental energy into a concept, it reveals itself in a some what short amount of time. As with many things lately, certain discussions have fostered various thoughts about various instruments, avionics and switches on my panel. Yet another discussion I had with Marco about his recently purchased Long-EZ –which incidentally has proven to be quite the test bed in that the handful of discussions that we’ve had concerning his new bird have spawned a number of viable system designs mods in mine– and the comment that he made on wanting to have a Garmin-free bird (due to their high prices on data updates), got me to thinking a bit . . . but admittedly, with everything that’s been going on lately, I really wasn’t thinking that much on it!

What I had been thinking about for some time was having a GPS with a decently larger screen size than the GTN650, but one that would still fit comfortably in my panel. In fact, I was thinking about this even more after I learned that GRT had debuted (FINALLY!) the 8.4-inch HXr at this year’s SNF.

Well, not sure if you got a chance to read Vic Syracuse’s article on the Avidyne IFD540 GPS Navigator in the August 2016 edition of Kitplanes Magazine. All I can say after doing a bit of research for the last 3 days on this puppy is WOW! This guy is packed with a ton of features, and in addition, its screen size falls right in between the GTN650 and the GTN750, so it looks like it will really work well for my panel size.

Moreover, the Avidyne IFD540 is a drop in replacement for the Garmin GNS430, so the pinouts are nearly the same as it is with all Garmin GPSs. I spent about a half hour confirming and updating all the component crosslink pins to ensure that this would work in my electrical system’s wiring schema, and it does! I had to change the actual pin ID numbers on about 70% of the pins (the D-Sub connectors identifying numbers are different as well), but did the swap in my wiring diagrams in short order.

And yes, I did say last week that I was done with my electrical system planning for the time being, but apparently this is the nature of the beast in building a homebuilt experimental airplane. So again, I think I’m done in having finished my electrical system planning (at least for now!).

Chapter 22 – A few Yays & an Oops!

Posted on 21 July, 2016 by Airdog

Over the past few days I’ve pretty much finalized all I can with my electrical system planning at this time. I would hazard a guess that over the past couple of months I’ve moved the “finish” dial on my electrical system design & documentation from the 89-93% range to the 96-97% complete range. There are still a few more admin things I need to finish, and depending on any future changes in vendor-mandated installation requirements on my respective components, I’ve pretty much got the design dialed in to the point where I can implement the electrical system plan where permitted from here on out as I build. I do have a couple of switchology decisions to make, but those won’t come until I mock up the panel and play around in a simulator-type setting while making airplane noises.

Moreover, I met another design milestone by creating wiring diagram 13 showing all the wiring for the 6 throttle handle-mounted switches. Since I’m making the throttle handle removable I’ll be running all the wires through a 24-pin AMP CPC connector–the same style connector that I used on the nose gear actuator connectors where I swapped out the stock Molex connectors. On the throttle handle I’ll be wiring all the switches with new wiring and swapping out the old stock circular Amphenol Mil-Spec connector with the much lighter and cheaper TE Connectivity AMP CPC connectors.

After removing all the existing electrical potting material and then stripping all the throttle handle switches of the myriad of resistors and capacitors, which created a near-impenetrable labyrinth around the back side of each switch, I was able to tone all the switches out. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had mistakenly ID’d the bottom toggle switch as a SPST switch rather than the DPDT switch that it actually is. I had already targeted an $80 OTTO replacement switch for this position, but after this latest round of investigation I can belay that order and use the stock switch for my Landing Brake!

With my throttle switches clearly identified, and the wiring to & from each switch, I could then marry up my initial throttle switch diagram with the 24-pin AMP CPC connector and finalize the throttle handle’s P4 connector pinout diagram. I have all my multi-pin circular connectors detailed in a PowerPoint slide deck (it just evolved that way). And since I currently have seven connectors on the aircraft (P1-P7), I obviously need a diagram for each connector. Unfortunately, I hadn’t created all the diagrams, so down another rabbit hole I went for a couple of hours to finish all the templates for all the circular connector pinout diagrams, as you can see in the pic below.

Now, each connector pair gets 2 pages detailing the pin assignments. The first page (top of the 3 pages in the pic below) details the general information about each connector: number of pins, part numbers, mounting flange (if present), hole number schema, pins, sockets, and standard vs reverse sex connector. The second/back page (middle & bottom in pic below, with bottom page info populated) shows the detailed pinout for each connector side, with wire colors and wire function/connectivity. I of course finalized populating all this information for each side of the P4 throttle handle switches connector.

As for wiring diagram 13 depicting the wiring for all the 6 throttle handle-mounted switches, below top you can see the initial draft versus draft #3 in the second pic below.

I knew that the top left throttle handle switch that was clearly designed for a specific F-15 system was not going to work for my application. This switch is nearly heavier than all the other switches combined and in my estimation is probably a good 30% of the stock weight of the throttle handle as it was shipped to me. I pulled this switch and then spent a fair amount of time identifying its replacement.

And here’s what I came up with: the OTTO T5 mini trim switch. The more complete description is a commercial grade 4-way plus center pushbutton trim switch. The pic below is a stock photo off the Mouser website. In actuality, the switch I ordered does have the “stadium” grips on the top as this pic shows, but it differs in that my switch is gray and it is press fit vs. threaded mounting. If you’re curious about the switch assignments, here they are:

UP – Trio Autopilot Fuel Information Screen Cycle
DOWN – AFP30 Air Fuel Data Computer Screen Cycle
LEFT – GRT HXr EFIS Page Flip
RIGHT – Garmin GTN650 NAV Source Select
CENTER – Garmin GTN650 CDI Source Select

As for the other Throttle Handle Switches, here’s the layout:

#1 – Outboard Front – 5-Position Mini Switch (described above)
#2 – Inboard Front – COM PTT
#3 – Inboard Side Top – COM1 Freq Flip-Flop
#4 – Inboard Side 2nd Down – Nose Gear UP/DN
#5 – Inboard Side 3rd Down – A. Remote Start Arm B. Trig TT22 XPDR Ident
#6 – Inboard Side Bottom – Landing Brake UP/DN

Alright, moving on!

As I was reviewing the P-connectors pinout diagrams, I set about to confirm some info on my P3 (Trio autopilot pitch servo) & P7 (Trio autopilot roll servo) connectors. For some reason our good friends building non-TSO’d products for our birds typically use auto grade Molex connectors. Being a true disciple of Bob Nuckolls, and having had other discussions with some smart bubbas on this topic, I am simply (and clearly) not a fan of Molex connectors. Especially for the autopilot roll servo which will be located on the back of the center section spar in the engine compartment. I want more environmental protection for this connector. So, my dear friends, I was confirming the wire colors and pinouts on the P7 connector with the Trio install manual–since I had just ordered a reverse sex 4-pin sealed connector (so that it was physically impossible to connect up either servo in the wrong spot) on my last Mouser order– AND that’s when a disturbing question popped up concerning both the P3 connector, and the pitch servo.

You see, I had incorrectly ordered a 4-pin connector for the pitch servo in my haste to get all the required electrical pieces parts in hand. It didn’t require any O-ring seals since it was in the avionics bay, so I simply pulled the trigger. But while reviewing the Trio autopilot installation manual wiring diagram, I realized I had forgotten about the 2 extra wires coming from the pitch servo for the Auto Trim feature. But why had I forgotten these wires? I then pulled the pitch servo out and –what?!– only 4 wires! Hmmm, maybe they were tucked inside the servo since this was an “optional” (key word here folks) feature. I pulled the cover off the servo, and no joy. There was not an extra pair of wires or connection points inside this servo. Ok, what’s going on here?

I went to Trio’s website, and I still got the impression that the Auto Trim feature was a standard feature of Trio’s Gold Standard servos and merely labeled as “optional” since the builder had to add a relay, bridge rectifier and wire it all up for it to work.

I called Chuck at Trio to ask him about this latest puzzling revelation. He and the Trio gang were just getting ready to head out the door to Oshkosh, but he took the time to have a detailed conversation on the status of my pitch servo. So here’s the deal: A few years ago the Auto Trim feature was an actual priced option for the Trio Gold Standard servo. However, they decided to simplify production and simply make the Auto Trim a standard feature on the pitch servo, yet still optional as to if the builder/owner wanted to utilize it or not. Since this was my impression all along, it never entered my brain as a data point when I bought these servos from a fellow homebuilder (Rans S7 I believe) off of Ebay. If you recall, I had the servos sent straight to Trio who made one engineering upgrade, ops checked the servos and then sent them on to me with the install kit required for a Long-EZ. All was good! Or, so I thought. Hmmm…

Okay, lesson learned! The money I saved on buying these servos off of Ebay has been reduced to virtually nil now that I’ll be sending the pitch servo back to Chuck, along with a couple hundred bucks, to have the Auto Trim feature installed. All in all, no big deal. I’m just glad I caught it early on. And I guess technically this was two Oops since I also had to spend $10 to include all the pieces to make up a 7-pin AMP CPC connector on my last Mouser order! [Note: I’m using a 7-pin connector since they don’t make a 6-pin.]

In closing, I currently have everything either on hand or on order for my electrical system. As I did a couple of years ago, I’ve included a rundown below of all my electrical system diagrams (wire book) up to this point. As you can see, I have a few more systems to figure out, but nearly all of the really critical stuff is complete. As for the Main, Battery and E- Busses, I won’t diagram those out until all my other system designs are completed and installed.

0. Index Page
Z. Z-13/8 Electrical System
A. Switches, Circuit Breakers & LEDs
.99 Grounding Busses
1. Panel Components
2. Radio & audio system
3. Panel Power
4. Electrical System Components Location Diagram
5. Aircraft Wire Labeling Sectors Diagram
6. Nose Gear
7. Pitch & Roll Trim Systems
8. Lights: LDG, TAXI, NAV, STROBE
9. Engine Info Management
10. Fuel System
11. Cockpit Lighting
12. Landing Brake
13. Throttle Handle Switches
14. Control Stick Switches
15. Integrated Backup Battery System & X-Bus
16. Alarm & Warning Systems
17. Charging System
18. AG6 Warning Annunciators
19. Electronic Ignition
20. P-Mag Ignition
21. Heater System
22. Starting System
23. ELT
24. Heated Pitot Tube
25. Trio Autopilot
27. Main Bus
28. Battery Bus
29. E-Bus
30. Long Wire Runs

This wraps it up currently for my electrical system design and planning. From here I’m going into house cleaning mode (multiple out of town visitors arrived and/or arriving!) and shop cleaning & organization to move forward on the actual build… woo-hoo!

Chapter 22 – Trio Pro Pilot on deck!

Posted on 25 June, 2016 by Airdog

Today I finally received one of my instrument panel items that I’ve had on the list of things to buy for years now! About a week ago I pulled the trigger on the Trio Pro Pilot Autopilot control head. If you recall, I bought the servos from a guy off of eBay a couple of years ago and had them sent straight to Chuck at Trio who upgraded and ops checked them to ensure all was good.

This autopilot unit has the GPS Steering (GPSS) and GPS Vertical Steering (GPSV) options on it, with the GPSS allowing the Pro Pilot to receive GPSS commands from the GRT EFIS or Garmin via ARINC 429 data outputs. The GPSV allows the autopilot to receive pitch steering commands from a WAAS GPS receiver for precision approaches using GPS.

In addition, after a lot of discussion over the years, Chuck tweaked one of the pull up resistors in this Pro Pilot’s innards so that it can receive fuel data from the FT-60 Red Cube fuel flow meter along with the GRT EFIS. This gives me fuel management on both the EFIS and the Pro Pilot, which provides some pretty nifty fuel flow information.

A Long EZ Push

The Building of Long-EZ N916WP

Category Archives: Avionics/Instruments