Chapter 13 – Jack’s the man!

I started out today by cleaning up the layups from last night.  I pulled the peel ply, razor trimmed & sanded the edges.

Glassing Results

Then it was time for round two.  I cut out the pieces of BID for the other side of the draft plate and for the battery mounting tube 5-ply reinforcement pads.  I didn’t glass the face of  F4.1 since that occurs when it gets mounted to the aft side of the NG30 upright arms.

Glassing second sides

I then mixed up some epoxy with slow hardener and wetted out the BID.

Draft plate & reinforcement BID

The layups followed the same flow as yesterday.  Since I wasn’t in a hurry for this layup to cure I didn’t use a heat lamp… thus I went ahead and weighed it down with a gallon of paint.

Weight for curing

Later in the evening Jack Wilhelmson returned my call.  After telling him the symptoms, he diagnosed the problem as me mixing up some wires on the switch side of the AEX P2 connector.  Sure enough, after we got off the phone I checked the wiring and had wired up the connector in the mirror image of how it was supposed to be.

Thinking that I had indeed found the problem, and then remedied it, I wired it all back up. It just so happened that the last step was to connect the AEX hot power wire to the battery.  Well, when I did I was met with a distinct & resounding “POP” sound.  Initially, I thought (and hoped) it was the 5-amp inline fuse that sounded off.  But alas, it was something on the AEX board.  I couldn’t see any physical damage but when I cracked the case I certainly could tell that I had let the smoke out of one the components by the smell.

Ok, so during our discussion Jack had told me that if no AEX unit is used then pins 5 & 6 on the P2 connector require a jumper across them.  I disconnected the AEX and then rigged up a jumper across pins 5 & 6.  I rechecked the rest of wiring, connected power and then hit the up switch.

Nothing.

It’s late in the evening now so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to give Jack a call back and confirm both the AEX status and how to fix the persistent issue with the nose gear actuator wiring.

Once I get the nose gear actuator running correctly I’ll mount the motor into the NG30 gear box and then get the gear strut attached to the motor.

 

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