Hey Guys,

I’ve left the painting and finishing world on this bird and am now primarily focused on the electrical system install and expect to start the avionics install in earnest in the next week or two.

Somewhat concurrently, at least mentally (ha!) I’m working to get the rudder/brake pedals configured and installed, along with the brake lines, master cylinders and reservoirs plumbed. 

Coming up soon will be the balancing, rigging and final installation of all the control surfaces.

…getting exponentially closer to finish every day!

Another 2 day update here, and I have to admit that it’s hard to remember and recount all of the single wires that I’ve ran, spliced and/or terminated.

I did do the final connect on all the Garmin GNS-480 power and ground wires.  The thick green marker lines are how I’ve been denoting that wires are run and connected on the different wiring diagrams.

Now, see that chicken scratching at the top of the diagram?  I’d like to be able to print out new 11×17 inch diagrams but my Brother printer is not doing well and needs some rehabilitative TLC to get back online for printing… which of course takes time.  To add to my tale of woe, after printing out most of the GNS-480 Installation Manual on my regular Canon printer, 2 days later I get an error code that essentially said that barring a few YouTube hacks, I need a new printer head… which I pulled the trigger for on Amazon.

This is just all to say that I’ve spent well over 3 hours over these past 2 days just messing around and learning about printer operation issues!

I did solder splice the orange and orange/black wires from the E-Bus fuse tab F05 to the the white/orange wires in the respective 6-wire cables coming from the GIB headrest and Hell hole (no pic of that).

Also out of the 6-wire #2 I found the white/green and green wire pair that powers the RAM air valve open and close, via switch 16 (left side of panel).  In the pic below this pair —now spliced to the switch wires— travels from lower left to upper right.  And yes, the remaining wires are still a crazy rats nest… I’ll need to run around 20-30 wires before I can start making any real attempt at wire/cable management.

Since I moved the power source to the Pitch Trim module to the Battery Buss (from the Main/Master Buss) I had yet another splice job to tie the new power wire coming from the nose area to the existing (albeit shorter) power wire coming off the switch.  I then did the final install of the Pitch Trim Master power switch (lower left switch in pic).

Over the next couple of hours I worked on getting the Warning Annunciator Sub-Panel installed, with the wires passed through the panel for their final connections (shown after below pic).

I then finalized the colors and positions of the GNS-480 annunciation lights and affixed them in place with a dollop of hot glue on each outer edge of every light.  The lights sit in the their openings fairly snugly already, so the glue was just to ensure they don’t vibrate out.

I then prepped and added tubing to the alternate static source switch that is positioned about as close to the left sidewall as you can get.  I then mounted the switch hardware to finish off the install.

With the alternate static switch installed, that then allowed me to install the MiniUni-2 backup EFIS & fuel timer into the outboard top left instrument position.  In addition, I installed the AP SRC (aka “Autopilot Source”) switch just above this backup EFIS.  Of course note that the Warning Annunciator Sub-panel is installed at the top center of the panel.

Again, here we have another shot of the installed Warning Annunciator Sub-panel, as well as the freshly installed Vertical Compass Card on the right outboard top instrument position.  I’ll note that other than SW011, the Pitch Trim Master power switch, none of these other just-installed components’ wiring is complete yet.

And a parting shot with all the newly installed instrument panel tidbits in place. I expect to spend another 2  days simply wrangling and bedding down more stray wires, as I have been, before I start in on installing any other panel components.  As I mentioned in my last post, I also need to set a good bit of time aside to install/wire the Intercom as well.

Pressing forward!

Today was yet again one of those long days with seemingly little to show for it at the end of it.

Still a lot of sorting through wires to optimize their routing and flow, picking off the low hanging fruit that were easier to route and terminate into their final end points.  That being said, my primary targets today were the E-Bus, the G4 Ground Bus and the Main Bus.

The E-Bus got two new entrants into the club, with the power wire that feeds the HXr and AHRS primary power connections via the panel mounted “avionics” switch getting connected to the top fuse buss threaded stud.  Again, since GRT recommends fusing on power feeds AFTER a switch, the fuses for both the HXr and AHRS are inline fuses, with the power feed wire again going straight to the E-Bus threaded stud… no need to waste a fuse slot.

The switch on the panel that sits immediately inboard of the HXr & AHRS Master switch is the belly RAM air scoop open/close switch.  The power wire for this switch routes in a bundle horizontally across the top of the E-Bus and then terminates into a fuse position low on the front side of the E-Bus (left side in pic).  It’s targeted fuse tab was F06, with F07 being the bottom fuse position on the forward side.

However, the wire was about 2″ too short to be routed properly AND reach the F06 fuse position, so I swapped it with the currently open F04 fuse spot which is/was for the transponder (wire not ran yet).  Again, that meant some relabeling [I printed off and applied about ten labels today], fuse position swapping and document updating.  Moreover, the RAM air switch power also shares its fuse with the gas tanks’ fuel level probes and power to the GIB headrest avionics bay cooling fans.

A minor issue I ran into was that the white/orange striped wires from both 6-wire cable #1 and #2 that feed the fuel probes and cooling fans, respectively, were also not long enough to reach the E-Bus fuse tab, even after the swap.  With no white/orange wire on hand, I spliced a length of an orange wire and an orange/black wire in the FastOn connector to later connect/splice to the white/orange wires from the two 6-wire cables (which I plan to do tomorrow).

In other news… I then found and retrieved out of the bundle the two main wires that connect up to the B&C Voltage Regulator: the F-Lead from the L-40 alternator and the power lead from “ALT FLD” circuit breaker via the Master Switch.  As par usual (ha!) the F-lead wire was about a foot too short, so I spliced a length of white 20 AWG wire to the existing F-lead.

Here we have the B&C Voltage Regulator wired and installed.

I’ll note that BEFORE I installed the voltage regulator I spent over an hour reorganizing, consolidating (via piggyback FastOns) and re-terminating the G4 ground wires to move them all to the forward 2 of the 4 vertical rows of tabs, starting from the very top and moving down.

I also terminated and connected up a few more loose ground wires during this process, like the un-terminated piggy-back ground wire hanging free at the bottom of the pic above.  Once I terminate another ground wire I’ll connect the two and install them as a single unit onto the G4 ground buss.

If you look directly below the voltage regulator’s yellow label you can make out the open tabs on the G4 ground buss.  The reason for my reorganization on the G4 ground buss was simply for “easier” (as much as possible) access to install ground wires with the voltage regulator installed.

Thankfully, once the ground wires are connected in this out of the way corner, I expect to have to get in there very rarely, if it all, once the bird is flying.  I’ll further note that the main impediment to easy access to the ground buss tabs is a combination of the wire bundle coming from the nose and the nose hatch latch cable.

So the total for today was 4 ground wires terminated and installed on the G4 Ground Bus, a couple wires added to the E-Bus, a couple more terminated on the main bus and the CABIN HT indicator light power wire soldered into place.

And with that… pressing forward!

Another quick update for the past 2 days.

First, I’ll start off by saying that since I had knocked out most of the electrical wiring harnesses (usually in the cold winter months) over the past 10 years my thought on finishing the electrical system in situ inside the bird was going to be pretty much plug and play, with at least 70-80% of the wiring simply needing connection to other components, busses, etc.  However, that number is actually inverse with all but 20-30% of wiring needing further massaging for final routing, connection and termination.

Having taken a couple of years of organic chemistry in college, I explained it to my wife as such:  For any given molecule with a certain makeup of, say, 6 atoms of element X and 12 atoms of element Y, there can be a half dozen physical SHAPES of the molecule, some lending to better chemical reactions, others not as much… again, all due to the physical shape of the specific molecule.

In many ways that is very close to what is currently happening inside my aircraft.  For example, coming from the front-to-aft bundle of wires were 2 ground wires that on paper, based on amp level, I had getting terminated into the G5 ground buss, which is located midpoint on the LEFT side of the Tri-Paragon.

Now, as you’ve seen in the pics that I’ve been posting, I have A LOT of wires… as most aircraft do.  So why should I run 2 wires past the G4 Ground Buss (above) to a ground buss distinctly further away?  When I can simply cut them shorter and dive them right into the G4 Ground Buss and not have as many wires to contend with in open space.

The main couple of reasons NOT to would be to save time (always good) and lack of capacity on G4 (not an issue).

What it does require however is lopping off a perfectly good D-Sub pin to then crimp a FastOn connector AFTER relabeling the wire AND updating all the associated diagrams.

Yes, helps a lot with all my wires in the cleanup and management of the wiring, but it does take a bit more time to get from point A to point B.  This is just one example of many how my wiring management is going, and why it’s taking a bit more time than I had initially expected.

Switching gears… I got my new panel indicator lights from PCFlights in the mail today, with 2 of the 3 new lights installed (not permanently yet) in the panel: 3rd from left “FUEL PUMP” (top) and “TAXI LT” (bottom) and then a single light on the far right end, “AP SERVOS OFF/PCS” which will illuminate when I depress the AP OFF/PCS button on the control stick.

PCS is Pilot Controlled Steering that enables you to temporarily take control of the bird while it’s being flown under autopilot control then once released the control is handed back over to the autopilot/servos.  The trick here is to keep the button depressed for 5 seconds or more to engage the PCS function.  So yes, the light technically covers two somewhat separate functions, but they are both initiated by the physical act of pushing that single button.
[The final new light: “STARLINK” (top) and “CABIN HT” (bottom) is currently attached to Relay 21 and I was lazy in not wanting to disassemble that to mount the light… but it’s ready to install]

Back to my original point above, after installing the SmartStart module and attaching its D-Sub wiring harness, I then realized that nearly half the wires need to come out the left vs right side of the Tri-Paragon.  Plus I needed to solder a wire close to the connector coming from the front-to-aft wiring bundle.  So off the D-Sub connector came (which is a PITA!… requires a mirror), wiring routed as required, soldered, etc. and then back on went the D-Sub connector.  Note the red power wire connected to the lower right (aft) fuse tab on the E-Bus.

Also note the large white nylon nut to the immediate right of the SmartStart module. This is the GRT HXr OAT probe that installs into a hole from the outside-in, which was fine and happy for the many years it sat on my panel mockup.  But here in the real aircraft, it required removing one wire from the AHRS D-Sub connector and cutting the black ground wire to install it from inside the nose wheel cover to the inside of the bird.  Of course after it was installed it required me to then reinsert the wire into the D-Sub and solder splice the ground wire back to its other (terminated) half.
Yep… no free lunch on this electrical system endeavor!

Here we have the E-Bus (again, ‘E’ is for Endurance) on the left side of the Tri-Paragon with a good many power wires attached to it, nearly all with their own story of shortening or lengthening, combining, or re-terminating with FastOn connectors (couple scenarios where I had a “piggyback” FastOn on both wires to allow double-stacking wires on the fuse tab… only one required and will fit, so I had to lop off/replace the other one with a single).  I fully expect the E-Bus and most of the Main Bus to be populated over the next couple of days.

I spent well over 3 hours today on the P5 plug wires getting that rats nest untangled and the various wires oriented, grouped and flowing nicely from that point to points yonder.  This required multiple removal of wires from the P5 connector, often the same wire multiple times as the routings progressed, which again entailed using a mirror, good lighting and tons of patience to de-pin the wires in that tight corner with the P5 mounted face down.

The primary objective in my focus on untangling the P5 plug wires was first to get all the Dynon intercom wires through the bottom instrument panel bulkhead hole and ready for connection to the intercom (mid-right pilot armrest) and the headphone connections (aft right pilot armrest).  Ancillary to that was freeing up Relay #9 —handles the COM1 to COM2 radio swap between GNS-480 (COM1) and the Trig TY-91 (COM2)— which is the center hub/meeting point of all the mostly shielded wires that go to each radio unit.

Within the next 2-3 days I plan on setting aside most of a work day to focus solely on wiring up the intercom and headphone wires.

Inching forward…

Yep Sir, another post covering the past 2 days.  Barely if I’m honest since I had some much-needed chores to get done around the house on day one, so I printed out most of a new Garmin GNS-480 installation manual.  There’s a color heavy segment and some 11×17 diagrams that I’ll have printed down at Staples to save my printer ink.

I’ll note that a reprint on this guy was required since my original manual was ruined in the hurricane/tornado that hit my hangar just after moving down to NC in 2019.  Luckily the paperwork specific to my GPS unit was in a plastic sleeve which saved it.  I just don’t know where that document is at the moment… ha!

Continuing with my adminstrivia on Day 1, after a physical inventory inside the bird that involved removing a single wire, I did the final tweaks on the P5A connector pinout sheet.

Start of day 2: I pulled the battery out of the nose while ensuring that I documented every step.  I felt that it was akin to working on a car where you needed to remove half a dozen parts just to get the one that you need to work on.  Well, it’s not that bad but the tool box will have to come out (which I planned for and is why it’s easily removable) and the 6 AWG cable that feeds the master bus will need disconnected from the battery contactor to rotate it (and its attached ammeter) out of the way so that battery can slide in with a good 0.32 mm clearance to spare (I jest… kinda).

I even pondered making the IBBS on the left side (upper right in pic) removable, but then determined I didn’t need to with the 6 ga cable moved out of the way.

I then put the bottom battery tray into place, reinserted the battery to make sure it would fit with the tray installed, then removed the battery a final time to ensure process repeatability before I called the battery install & removal steps good.  I again documented that entire procedure.  I’ll note with the battery and tray in together, I marked the positive and ground battery cables for trimming to proper length.

Speaking of the 6 AWG cable in the nose —the one with the ammeter attached— my next task was lopping off a good 3 feet of excess of it that was hanging out through the panel and into the pilot’s seat.  Once I dialed in the no-kidding length of the cable, I crimped a #10 screw ring terminal onto it and mounted it into place on the master buss threaded post (pic 1), all AFTER I placed a rubber boot onto the cable.  I then slid the white rubber boot over the ring terminal and post (pic 2).  The Master Buss is now officially plugged into the system for power.

I then did pretty much the same thing on the E-Bus (opposite/left side) by cutting to length the 12 AWG feed wire from Relay 18 —which is the SD-8 b/u alternator to E-Bus only power feed— then crimped a ring terminal onto the cable before installing it onto the E-Bus’s threaded post.  Another major power circuit wire trimmed to length and terminated.

Note that the AMX-2A 10-channel signal mixer, that feeds into the intercom, has been installed… still to be secured when I do all the final cable/wire management.

I also spent a good bit of time wrangling all the wires hanging out of the top of the bird, and separating them out into groups depending on origin (or final destination).  I corralled and zip-tied the wire/cable feeds coming from the aft end of the bird along the bottom right edge of the panel to meet in the middle of the panel before 80-90% of them turn forward to get terminated onto Tri-Paragon components.  Some of those wires will head north to either the indicator lights or the Warning Annunciator Sub-panel.  Finally, a good few will head over to the points on the left sidewall (P4 throttle handle plug, etc).

I also spent some time isolating the feed wires to the the P5 plug that handles all the wires to the control stick.  I then installed the P5A plug onto the right upper sidewall mounting flange.  I still have a good number of wires left to terminate into the P5 plug, and will work and route those as I come across them.

Here’s a current shot of the panel with mostly the wires and cables from the aft end of the bird all spilling out through the HXr EFIS mounting hole.

To do some quick cleanup in getting wires installed and out of the rats nest “race” I focused on a group of ground wires mingling about near the F22 area, all whose final destination was the G4 Ground Buss just a scant few inches away.  One was a ground wire that I honestly don’t even know what component it went to (ALL my ground wire FastOn connectors have black heat shrink on them —for this very purpose of ID’ing— while ALL power wire FastOn connectors have red heat shrink) and next was the nose gear’s Relay Control Unit (RCU) and Automatic Extension Module (AEM) ground wires that I terminated into one FastOn (per plan) and installed onto the G4 Ground Buss.

The final set of ground wires took a bit more time, first in verifying the wires coming out out of that bundle in the pic above [again, an issue that I discovered was that wire labels do a great job, UNLESS they’re buried in a cable bundle!].  I did a continuity check on a suspicious pair of wires that I quickly determined went to the GIB cigarette lighter charger.

I also had a single labeled green wire (ground) to the GIB USB charger, and an unlabeled (the segment I could see) white wire (power) that APPEARED to be the green wire’s paired mate… but it wasn’t ringing off with my continuity check.  I chalked this up to my multimeter probe not being able to get into the flat USB plug to contact the positive pin, so I grabbed the battery and a 5 amp fuse and connected up the white and green pair.  Thankfully the LED light on the USB charger lit up and it charged my phone when I connected it up via a USB cable.  Sweet!

With my wire checks good, I then cut and terminated the two GIB charger ground wires into a butt splice connector about 6″ forward of the panel.  Separately, I then added a piggyback (2 tabs) FastOn connector to a length of 14 AWG wire, installed that onto the G4 Ground Buss to then allow me to get the proper length to splice it to the two GIB charger ground leads via the butt connector. Thus the GIB chargers’ ground circuit was complete.

A part of this whole endeavor was printing off another batch of wire labels, which I applied as required during all my above shenanigans.

But what about that piggyback FastOn connector?  Well, I cut and labeled the wire before crimping on a single FastOn connector for the pilot’s front seat cigarette lighter charger ground and terminated that onto the piggyback tab of the GIB charger ground wires… again, all per plan.  Now the only charger ground remaining to terminate is the pilot’s USB charger (not to this ground point)… when I find it!

Finally, here’s a pic of the right side of the bird now, with a lot less wires hanging out (3 of those ground wires came from this bundle)…

Compare the pic above to just a couple of days ago …. one by one, I’m slowly getting these wires to their final termination points.

Pressing forward!

I’m not going to lie, looking at the massive amount of wires hanging out of the bird from last night was a bit daunting and overwhelming.  I mean, where to start?

Well, luckily I had been building my to-do list so I just started on my post-Triparagon install section of it.  That list is a living document and changes day-by-day, and bumped up to the top of the list was both the P4 CPC plug, and more specifically the wiring for the Landing Brake out of the P4 plug.

Starting out late this afternoon (I got a late start), I terminated all but one wire (that goes to the AG6 warning annunciator) from the P4 plug/relays to the landing brake actuator and throttle quadrant micro switch, in that order.

Here we have the 2 white wires to microswitch SW082 on the throttle quadrant which closes a circuit when the throttle is wide open.  This in turn closes the landing brake in case it’s open either during a take-off roll or during a go-around.

I then attached the ground cable from the main battery to the G4 “Forest-of-Tabs” primary avionics bay ground buss (bottom end of yellow pointer)… note the white-labeled wires behind the yellow pointer are the G5 ground buss connector wires, while the wires immediately to the left of the G4 stud are the G7 ground buss connector wires. Note that the upper right half of the pic is the aft side of the F22 bulkhead.

Here’s that ground cable on the battery end inside the nose battery compartment, awaiting to be terminated with a ring connector.

I then reinstalled the TCW Safety-Trim box onto the Tri-Paragon lower right side, just aft of the center F22 bulkhead and below the G4 Ground Buss discussed above.

The top aft screw that secures the Safety-Trim box above is also the forward securing screw for the TCW SmartStart unit that I re-secured on the left side as well.  I then installed the D-Sub connectors for both the SmartUnit and the Safety-Trim box (which you can just make out through the circular opening above / left of the Smart-Start unit).

After nearly an hour of wrangling and organizing the wiring inside the avionics bay, I started to work on the remaining wires that feed into the P4 connector.  After hunting down a few wires, I realized something wasn’t right in Denmark… the component wires were just NOT matching what I had on my P4 connector pinout sheet.

I had used the pinout sheet to inventory the P4 connector just a couple of days ago, but now realized it was out of date as compared to the actual wiring diagram.  A perfect example of what happens when the paperwork is not updated!

So I took almost another hour (with coffee!) to compare the wiring diagram vs the pinout sheet, confirm the existing wiring inside the bird, and then update my P4 pinout sheet.

By this point it was getting later into the evening and I was ready to have dinner with my wife, so I called the workday done.

There are still a ton of wires to sort through and connect up, and I expect this to take at least another day or three, but I can already see good progress.

With that, I’ll add: Get ‘er done!

I started off today spending a few hours getting the landing brake circuitry all figured out, then sorting through all the left side and P4 connector wiring.

After getting a good bit of wiring channeled and wrangled, a few spliced and a numbered labeled, I then prepped the Tri-Paragon to install into the bird’s avionics bay by first removing the TCW Technologies Safety Trim box to allow securing the Tri-Paragon to the mounting tabs with countersunk screws (2 which are situated under the Safety Trim unit).

I then installed the Tri-Paragon into the avionics bay of the bird… this is a shot from the left side, adjacent to F22.

And a shot through the aft nose avionics access opening.

And a couple shots from left and right side panel looking forward.

A shot from the right peering in between F22 and F28.

And lastly, a shot of all the wires that I need to sort out, wrangle and connect over the next few days.

Pressing ahead!

Another 2-day post here, which is clearly becoming my norm.

I got the Tri-Paragon back out into the shop, ran off a good bunch of wire labels and applied those with the heat gun.

Not shown is that I realized I needed another few wires soldered into the Video Camera MUX D-Sub connector for the throttle handle castle switch that controls the video camera forward & reverse screen cycling on the HXr EFIS.  All totalled, I soldered in 3 wires for that function.

I’ve been holding off on working on the stripped out #8 setscrew on the right wingtip Nav & Strobe light assembly until warmer weather, and today that happened.  I got the setscrew out using the technique of forcibly inserting a hi-torque bit (took 2 sizes) to reverse it out with judicious force.

I then used my 1/4″ ratchet to install a new set screw with a 5/64″ allen bit inside a 1/4″ socket to keep the alignment as straight as possible, and then no kidding it snapped off before the setscrew was all the way into the body of the Nav/strobe light.  My saving grace was that it wasn’t nearly as far in as the first setscrew (about 0.05″ peaking out), so in a number of iterations I VERY CAREFULLY Dremeled a slot into the exposed setscrew to then use a flat-tip screwdriver to unscrew it… obviously at this point we’re into the official TOTAL PITA realm, and I clearly didn’t want to go through this sh*tshow a third time.

I test installed the 3rd setscrew with a brand new 5/64″ allen wrench when I noted there was still just a hair bit of wobble on the installed light… so I added two separate plies of thicker Gorilla duct tape on the mounting bracket, and 4 small dollops of RTV to secure it in place when I did the final install.  As you can see, that did the trick.

I should note that, as per AeroLEDs, these setscrews are “patch” setscrews in that they have a literal patch of pre-applied thread locker on one side of the threads.  I don’t know if that was the issue, and I even ran a 8-32 tap into the hole to ensure the threads were clean after I retrieved the jacked up setscrews.  Anyway, lessons learned for the left wing and task complete.

Although this entire initial endeavor was undertaken a few weeks ago, here’s the shot to show the wing leading edge Wig-wag/landing light wired up and installed (still needs aimed correctly before lens goes on).

I noted that I had misinterpreted the physical layout of the landing brake relay position on the wiring diagram as I was finalizing its connection to the P4 connector (throttle switch cable), so tomorrow I’ll have fix that and redo the connection wiring [40% of work is rework they say??].

I also did a number of other clean up, prerequisite wiring tasks and labeling in preparation before the Tri-Paragon gets installed… shooting for tomorrow if everything goes as planned!

Ok sports fans, the “big” reveal is here… my project for the last week in organizing, planning, and implementing is functionally complete.

Let’s get into it.  First, the issue I had was simply not enough space to add more indicator lights to the top row above the HXr EFIS.

As I was finalizing my AG6 programming I pulled the “Fuel Pump” indicator off the row of lights and replaced it with the “Autopilot Servos Off/Pilot Controlled Steering On” indicator light (truncated of course).  After my discussions with Rich regarding the AG6 annunciations, specifically on the Fuel Pump and Starter On annunciations, and how I wanted to manipulate those —but can’t given the inherent operational limitations of the AG6… just more detailed programming I wanted than available— I assessed what I deemed as my requirements for the indicator lights in conjunction with the AG6 alarms.

The AG6 Fuel Pump alarm I wanted was a flashing red light AFTER about 6 minutes had passed to notify me that I had forgotten to turn my fuel pump off.  Since I’ll be routinely switching tanks now (vs my extensive high wing “Both Tanks” history) I figured that would be good to have.  However, that would negate the simple “Fuel Pump On” notification via the AG6 since it won’t do both functions.

Before I get into more notifications and annunciations, lets get into my solution: converting a couple of my single indicator lights into 2-row indicator lights, with one component per each row, to give me more component indicator lights on the entire complement immediately above the HXr EFIS.

Here is the evolution of that in one pic:
From the top middle we have the initial blue 3D printed prototype that I drew up in CAD and tweaked a few times over to allow for 2 each 3mm (vs 5 or 8mm) LED lights per row. The top right is the standard PCB connector on the stock indicator lights.  Below that, lower right corner is with PCB/LED lights removed.  The bottom middle is after I got the hole sizes dialed in for a tight fit for the 3mm LED lights, where I then switched to black filament. The two left side light cases are where I worked on getting the height of the center horizontal divider where I needed to minimize light seepage from top or bottom being lit while the other side indicator is off.

My first test with an old indicator label installed on a new 3D printed case was without any resistor installed (pic 1). I then added a 470 Ohm resistor for the pair of blue LEDs, where you can see it not glowing quite as bright (pic 2).

The weekend was fairly slow build-wise given Valentine’s Day and some house work I had to get done.  Over a couple of days I really focused on nailing down the circuitry of my top row indicator lights, and what/how I would meld the new 2-row indicator lights into that… here is the initial wiring plan for all that.  A reminder that these lights are also all hooked into the push-to-test circuit and ran through their own dimmer switch.

Here we have a new 3D printed indicator light case, or shell, on the left, compared to a stock one I received from the vendor on the right.

And here we have a new 3D printed light case test installed into the top row light spaces on the panel along with an old stock light case.  Can you tell the difference? (3D printed is on the right).

With my wiring diagram in hand, test and checks completed, I then started installing the LED lights into the 3D printed cases.  At this point I only have two of the 2-row indicator lights in the mix (with an option for a third if I need more component annunciations), with this being the second of the two that I installed the lights into.

For ease of assembly and soldering, I added the resistors onto the negative legs of the LEDs.  Here are 820 Ohm resistors for each pair of lights, while on the first light assembly I made up I had separate 470 Ohm resistors for each LED light.

I put an order in for new LED indicator lights, which on these pair of “double-stack” lights I really only need the front label pieces to pop into my light assemblies.  Clearly why my test front label pieces don’t match the actual components these assemblies will annunciate.

And again, I’ll note that what I see in person is vastly different than the washed out colors my camera captures.  The green on the top row here is much richer and deeper in person.  This is for the FUEL PUMP (on) indication (pic 1), which just lets me know that the fuel pump is on.  This then allows me to program the AG6 to alarm after 6 minutes if the fuel pump is left on (and I clearly am not noticing this indicator light… it happens).

The bottom white indicator (pic 2) is the closest pictorial representation of color and intensity of all these shots.  This will be for the TAXI LT (on) indicator.  Note the minimal bleed over from top light to bottom and vice versa… very acceptable.

The other double-stacked 2-row light assembly has blue on top for the STARLINK (on) indicator (pic 1) and the orange/amber (VERY washed out compared to viewing it in person) for the CABIN HT (“HEAT” on) indicator (pic 2).  I’ll note that these represent the output of Relay 21 so these indicators will never be on at the same time, it’s either one or the other illuminated… with CABIN HT only on if I actually have the heat system powered on.

And a quick shot of my final wiring diagram/task list completed in getting all these indicators and alarms configured and finalized.

Time to do a few final preps in the aircraft (now that the weather temps are just a bit less COLD!) before installing the Tri-Paragon and getting the instrument panel installed.

Pressing forward!

I’ll admit up front that this is a partial blog post in that the big push I’m currently working on will be something I cover in another few days after I verify it’s all working as I designed it.

Meanwhile, I got a 12v-to-5v converter delivered today.  This is the converter that Eric Page recommended, and after testing it I can see why as it is almost bang-on perfect with a 5.04 volt output.

After my initial discussion with Eric where he pointed out that the 5v video camera, as all video cameras connected, needs to be powered from the Video Camera MUX I found a higher rated (buyer opinion, not electrically) converter on Amazon and pulled the trigger on it.  It’s not as bang on perfect with its output at 5.12v, but still well within specs.

I’ll note that Eric still plans on making me one of his high end 12v-to-5v converters, so this is a temporary stopgap unit, and due to ease of mounting and reportedly much cooler operation I went with the second converter.

Here it is mounted on the bottom left side shelf of the Tri-paragon.

So again, I’ll be reporting soon on my big push as it coalesces together… and yes, it’s delayed my installing the Tri-Paragon into the airplane by about a week.  Obviously I think this delay is worth it in the long run.

Yep… pressing forward.