Chapter 22 – Electrons come from paper!

Ok, so as I mentioned in my update, I have been working on my electrical system . . . a lot! I’ve probably put in a good 30 hours on my electrical system over the past 3-5 days.

Why, you ask?!  Especially when the plane is not near the point that it needs such detailed electrical diagrams!  Well . . .  I’d argue otherwise.  Having finally got my other house off my plate –it closed last week!– I am getting ready to do another gargantuan push on the build. I have no other real detractors at this point and I am preparing to dive in with all I’ve got. So, besides simply wanting to clear up a few nagging issues in my electrical design, especially before bringing any more on board, I wanted to get my electrical system design and documentation as up to speed as possible.

Below is the end result of my efforts over the last few days.

Wire diagram books

Here are the individual diagram pages for each subsystem.  To be clear, these are ONLY the ones that I’ve updated over the past week!  There are still about 10 more that need to be tweaked, refined and updated.

Updated Electrical Diagrams

An even closer shot . . .

Updated wire book pages

My focusing on the electrical system was some what of a result of 3 things converging on me at once.

First, my buddy Marco bought a beautiful Long-EZ to fly while he finishes up his build. Stemming from discussions on his new plane, our in-depth mind-melding on switchology, control/switch ergonomics and safety really got me diving deeper into a topic that I had been bantering around in my mind for quite some time.

Next, Grand Rapids Technologies debuted their 8.4″ HXr EFIS at Sun ‘N Fun in April. DONE!!!!!!  This is exactly what I have been waiting for FOR YEARS!!!  The right size with the right features to drive my components in meeting my design goals.  With this in hand, combined with a much more refined picture of my switchology, I set forth to conquer any of the major remaining design daemons in my architecture.

Lastly, I’m just bone tired.  I had less than a week to clean a very messy house that my tenants left me, and I had a number of repairs on top of that. I was working 13-16 hour days for almost a week, and I am just exhausted.  Working on the electrical system lets me rest a little physically as I recharge to tackle this beast!  Hoo-ah!

(Below is a pic of my Master Electrical System Diagram, which has been modified over a dozen times in the past month alone!)

Master Electrical Diagram

Over the past couple of days I’ve been on the phone with EFII, GRT, B&C, Trio, TCW, and a few others confirming my architecture design in the areas that incorporate their respective products.  I also confirmed some key system design features in a discussion with Bob Nuckolls (author of The AeroElectric Connection).  In short, I’ve been able to clear up a number of nagging design issues, streamline my system and really make a number of my electrical design goals a reality… There are a lot of them, so I’ll discuss them individually in-depth as I incorporate them into the build.

Electrical Docs

Freshly made wire books!Finally, I think I mentioned before that I took a bit of time to really go through my documentation on hand and clear out all the junk, archive most of the gee-whiz stuff and get it fairly organized into binders and work folders.  I had the same idea for my electrical system design documents as well, considering I haven’t really had any of them consolidated into a meaningful system until today.  I finally took the time to build electrical system binders to incorporate ALL the electrical system wire books, system diagrams, etc. into 2 binders, shown above, and I even constructed a table of contents/index.  I have to say by the time I was done I felt a huge sense of relief knowing that my electrical system is looking really, really good as I head into one of the final build surges on my Long-EZ project!

 

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