Chapter 4/14/22 – Firewall & Electrical

Today was another light build day since I went to a Fall Fun Festival with some friends.  I did get a bit done, starting off with some of what I worked a little bit on yesterday, then finished up quite a bit today: my “Triparagon”.  Or, basically the big motherboard for the vast majority of all my electrical system components: busses, grounding blocks, etc.

Since I now know exactly how my canard controls fit into the forward fuselage/nose, I was able to tweak the size & dimensions of the vertical Triparagon plate.  I recut another fresh, updated cardboard mockup and then set about figuring out the placement of my electrical components.  I’m extremely pleased with the fact that I’ll easily fit virtually my ENTIRE electrical system on this one plate.  And the only reason I say “virtually” is due to any future potentiality that I may have a component that doesn’t fit on the Triparagon, but currently EVERY piece of the electrical system fits on it!

Triparagon

I then spent a good half hour between removing the peel ply off the firewall front face 1-ply BID layup and then razor trimming the edges.  The firewall looks good and is very close to getting  mounted.  I do have to do some minor sanding along the edges and a couple places on the front face, and quite a bit on the aft side since I didn’t peel ply it for some odd reason (that was back in 2011, so my memory is foggy on why I didn’t peel ply it! . . . )

Firewall - forward side BID

I then spent another good 45 minutes looking at the configuration of stuff on my D-Deck area.  The 1/2″ square 6061T6 bar that you see will traverse across the fop front side of the CS spar, attached at the front corners of the top engine mount extrusions.  Yes, this is a modification of the GIB seatbelt mounts and is NOT per plans.  This bar will be mounted with the AN4 1/4″ extrusion bolt on each end (with 2024 inserts inside each of the bar for strength) and also have center mount countersunk screws to keep it secure.  That will allow the GIB to simply slide the upper seat belt shoulder straps inboard or outboard for comfort.  I weighed all these components, and this modification is within an ounce (probably less) weight-wise as the plans configuration.

The black GIB headrest and components shroud cardboard mockup (that I made in Germany) is a modification I’m doing ala Wayne Blackler (see second below).  I like this configuration INFINITELY better than the plans shroud that has the GIB with their essentially in coffin or something…. Blech!  With my GIB upper seatbelt bar mod I did have to trim the depth by about 3/4″, but it still looks as if everything I had planned to get mounted inside the headrest will still fit comfortably.

D-Deck GIB headrest

Wayne’s GIB headrest and component housing:

Wayne Blackler's GIB Headrest

The next couple of days I have an out of town visitor coming in, so between football, cooking out, visiting, beer drinking, etc. not a whole lot of work will get done.  Plus, I’ll be prepping to get back into my flying lessons which start this Wednesday.  Of course I’ll still be working on the build, but it will be significantly less with all the flying I’ll be doing!

 

 

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