Today I received the Nose Gear RCU box in the mail from Marco.  He did a great job and the relays fit perfectly!  A little too perfectly actually . . . The holes are aligned exactly as I designed them in CAD, except I put them in a little too close to the end wall of each relay so that I won’t be able to fit a normal aviation/MIL-SPEC nut on the screw.

After thinking about this issue a bit I realized that the answer was fairly simple: nutplates. Nutplates are narrow enough that they’ll fit and even though a bit higher cost solution than normal AN nuts, they’ll definitely do the trick.

With the relay mounting issue out of the way, I prepped the box to be mounted with 5 Clickbonds.  The mounting holes’ diameter were just slightly narrower than designed, so  I spent a few minutes drilling those out to size.  I then taped the back side of the box with clear packing tape.  After roughing up the back sides of the Clickbonds with sandpaper, I cleaned them with Acetone.  I then mounted them in the box, whipped up some 5-min glue and put a good dab on each Clickbond face.

I then mounted the box on the aft side of the Napster bulkhead aligned with some position marks that I had previously made.  I held the box in position for a little over 5 minutes to let the 5-minute glue cure.

With the 5 Clickbonds attached to the aft face of Napster I pulled the RCU box off of the bulkhead.  The Clickbonds set well and the attachments were solid.  I cleaned up some of the 5-min glue gunk and left the Clickbonds alone to fully cure.

While the Clickbonds cured, I measured out the dimensions I would need for the BID tapes for the top and bottom row of Clickbonds.  I wanted at least a good inch from each Clickbond stud to hold it securely in place.  I cut 3 plies of BID 2″ high and with a slight angle for the outboard side of the upper row, for a total of two sets of 3-ply BID.  I then configured the BID plies in plastic for pre-preg setups and called it a night.

Today I finished wiring all the components of the Nose Gear Auto Extension Module (AEM) as far as I could without having the physical box in hand.  As I’ve mentioned before, the AEM is simply an upgraded replacement of Jack Wilhelmson’s Nose Gear AEX system that utilizes Marc Zeitlin’s design to incorporate a few more parameters into the Auto Extension system to pretty much eliminate annoying false-positive situations and ensure that really the only time the AEX will deploy the gear is on final approach when you actually forgot to put the gear down.  To make the magic work, Marc added another airspeed switch (for a total of two), a throttle mounted “microswitch,” and a laser altimeter.

I decided to cram all this new stuff into a box approximately the same size as the original AEX box.  Since Marco is 3D printing this one as well, it will have holes ready to go for mounting the internal components and some external mounting flanges for attaching the box to the forward side of F22 with Clickbonds.

The laser altimeter operates on 5 Volts, so it requires a 12V-5V converter.  However unlike Marc Z. I chose to mount the converter up front versus the way he did right next to the laser altimeter (which is on the belly near the main gear).  There is no right or wrong here regarding the location of the voltage converter, I just simply wanted to drive the weight forward and also hide the converter away in the AEX box.

In between the voltage converter (right, below) and the airspeed switches (left, below) are two relays.  These relays are unique to my specific system since these are the ones I needed to wire into the mix if I wanted to continue to use my throttle-mounted toggle switch to control the nose gear up/off/dn.  These relays are fairly small and light, although robust, so the weight penalty is negligible.

Finally, in each pic I show the 15-pin DSub connector.  In the very top pic, and the one below, you can make out the black bar that depicts the hole for this DSub connector on the actual-sized box CAD diagram lying below the components

As with my RCU components, the only thing left to do with these are to physically mount them into the box and then cut & terminate the wires with DSub pins.  I do have a few minor tasks that I can complete for the final prep of this system before I have boxes in hand and am ready to install.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been designing what I have come to term the Relay Control Unit (RCU) box in CAD  [prior to this multi-day endeavor I spent a day and a half rewriting & reconfiguring John York’s CSA article on installing FeatherLite’s strake & strake leading edge kit specific to my build, and adding in all my past strake construction notes from Mike Beasley, Bernie Siu, Wayne Hicks, Dave Berenholtz … just to name a few].

With the incorporation of Marc Zeitlin’s new wiring for the nose gear Auto Extension System (AEX), which is essentially a redesign of Jack Wilhelmson’s entire electrical scheme for the nose gear, I wanted to get this new system as organized and compartmentalized as possible.  In short, I wanted the rats’ nest of wires gone and out of my nose compartment.

Now, the 3 main components making up my new electric nose gear system is still Jack’s electric nose gear actuator at it’s core, with the actuator motor and limit switches all tucked away under the NG30 cover.  The wiring exits the NG30 cover via a 14-pin AMP CPC connector and heads in two directions: 1) the new Relay Control Unit (RCU) that will reside on the left, aft side of the Napster bulkhead, and 2) the new Auto Extension Module (AEM) which is simply a replacement unit for Jack’s AEX box.  The AEM will sit in the same spot on the front CL of F22 in the top, aft notch in the NG30 cover.  The RCU will tie into the system via a 19-pin AMP CPC connector while the AEM will be connected via a 15-pin DSub connector.  Beside the larger backup battery and laser altimeter, there are minor few connections to the Triparagon, P4 Throttle Connector, and panel switches.  But for the most part, the lion’s share of the actual nose gear electrical system is contained within 3 major components: NG30, RCU & AEM.

I was drawing up a version of the box I wanted in my antiquated TurboCad system, when in a discussion with Marco he graciously offered to 3D print the boxes for me (maybe not quite understanding that my CAD kung fu wasn’t up to par with his!).  He had to redraw my neanderthal CAD drawings into Fusion360 but in the end came up with the awesome box rendering you see below (note: the angled corner is the top left box corner and is specifically shaped to allow it to fit with the curvature of the Long-EZ’s nose at its install point).

After some further discussion we came up with the lid design that will also be the attach point for the AMP CPC connector, since –YES– space is tight!

After confirming the myriad of little details on this box, Marco pulled the trigger and made our RCU box collaboration a reality.  Pretty cool, eh?!

With the RCU box design complete and construction underway, I then got to work on designing the AEM box.

After another quick consult with Nick Ugolini, and after finally getting to the end of the proverbial research road on my Camloc/Skybolt solution (based on Nick’s fastener test) I had a Skybolt order sitting on my computer screen ready to go.  I wasn’t planning on buying these parts this month but since I had just spent over an hour performing some online price comparisons, and these were the lowest price I could find, I decided to not keep this in the queue any longer and pulled the trigger.

So, as with most everything on this build, besides the inevitable nickel & dime onesy-twosey pieces that will crop up and need bought, this purchase does it for my Camloc/Skybolt 1/4-turn fastener system.  This will allow me to virtually (but not completely) go Camloc on my cowlings, RAM air/hell hole cover, internal cockpit hatch covers, etc.

Concurrent to my Skybolt research and order trigger pulling, as I was watching Mike Beasley’s progress on his baggage pod installation, with the help of the ubiquitous baggage pod install master, Steve Beert, my curiosity around some particulars of the baggage pod installation got the best of me.  So late last night I pulled out my notes and ended up back on James Redmon’s Berkut13 site to see what he had to say about it.

I knew that if I wanted to use Camlocs on my baggage pods that I needed to use the removable grommet 4002-NS vs the SK-O18S grommet that is held in place with a snap ring.  If these numbers are new to you, welcome to the club!  As with so many components on these airplanes there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of possible combinations.  Thus, I’m very thankful that Nick Ugolini documented his Camloc test.

Moreover, you may note that the the face of these grommets below look a bit different (to be clear: the grommet is the flange looking deal while the stud is the “screw”).  The one on the left is the non-removable (without tools) Skybolt SK-O18S, which I’ll be using for the majority of my Camloc installations.  The Camloc 4002-NS grommet on the right is meant to come out when the Camloc is unfastened and is used in places like the aft edges of the cowlings and on the baggage pods.

This view below clearly shows the difference between the SK-O18S on the left (secured to the cowling with a snap ring) and the removable 4002-NS on the left (for aft top/bottom cowling securing and baggage pods).

In addition, I discovered a nice surprise while re-reading stuff about installing the baggage pods on James Redmon’s Berkut13 site: he mentioned that Gary Hunter provided all the BID tapes required to mount these pods to your Long-EZ!  What?!  So I went digging in the box that I’ve had for a few years now and sure enough at the bottom was a box with the instructions in there and a bunch of MARKED bags with the BID required to mount the baggage pods . . . Now, how cool is that!!!  Who knew?!  ha!

One final point.  As I was reading through the how-to manuals & notes on installing the baggage pods, I discovered –the day after I got my Skybolt order!– that I needed one more of the -7 studs that I of course don’t have on hand.  See?!  I told you!  Build an airplane if you love never-ending goose chases… ha!