I was putting together my last big Aircraft Spruce order before I left the Middle East to head back to the States and got to the spot where I needed to order my SAF-AIR oil drain valve. I mean everyone uses SAF-AIR right?!  But man, oh man, are these things expensive!  I decided to do a bit more research to see if there were any alternatives out there.  Well, as you all know I spend a lot of time checking out what our RV brethren are doing over on the VAF site.  There I found a bunch of RV’ers singing the praises of an oil drain valve that is used in just about every type, make and model of vehicle around the world… from huge mega dump trucks to Caterpillar tractors to, well, uh, airplanes!

The valve they were talking about was the Fumoto oil drain valve that carries all the features of the SAF-AIR oil drain valve: it has a quick drain lever and a nipple attachment to allow permanent or temporary mounting of a hose to help in directing the oil flow while draining. It got rave reviews from both the VAF folks, and by just about everyone else that has ever used one. Maybe one of the best features of the Fumoto oil drain valve is the price.  I found it on Amazon for way less than half the price of the equivalent SAF-AIR valve.  Another thing it got high marks on feedback from its users was that it doesn’t leak or drip!

One thing I was concerned about was weight.  Since the Fumoto valve is virtually all brass, while the SAF-AIR is aluminum & stainless steel, my initial thought was that the Fumoto might be significantly heavier.  But much to my surprise (and delight) the Fumoto is almost exactly the same weight (literally within a few grams) as the SAF-AIR valve. With that knowledge in hand I pulled the trigger and ordered my new oil drain valve.  I also ordered one for my truck while I was at it.

As I said in my last post, I’ve been really busy trying to get everything in order to relocate out of the Middle East back to the States.  I’ll be visiting family on the west coast for a couple of weeks when I get back, so I’m trying to set-up all my travels once I get back as well.

I was able to do a fair amount of work on my Electrical Subsystem Diagrams, and I added a few more to the list.  Unfortunately I haven’t had time to take any pics of them.  Here is the new updated list nonetheless:

Z.  Z-13/8 Electrical System
–    Switch Configuration
1.  Panel Components
1.1 Panel Components Power
2.  Radio & audio system
3.  Main Bus
4.  Batt Bus
5.  E-Bus
6.  Nose Gear
7.  Pitch & Roll Trim Systems
8.  Lights: LDG, TAXI, NAV, STROBE
9.  Engine Info Management
10. Fuel System
11. Cockpit Lighting
12. Landing Brake
13. Throttle Switches
14. Control Stick Wiring
15. Integrated Back-up Battery System
16. Alarm & Warning Systems
17. Charging System
18. Heater System
19. Electronic Ignition
20. P-Mag Ignition
21. Component Connections
22. Starting System
23. Panel, Battery & Avionics Grounds
24. Cockpit, Firewall & Engine Grounds
25. Heated Pitot Tube
26. Trio Autopilot
27. ELT
28. Connectors/Pin IDs
30. Long Wire Runs

This will probably be my last update on these Electrical System Subsystems for a while.  I should get back into the swing of things on the build starting early to mid-August when I’m settled back in my house in Northern Virginia.

I spoke with electronics guru, Eric Jones, from Perihelion Design for a couple of hours a few days ago.  Eric is a regular contributor to Bob Nuckolls’ Aeroelectric Connection forum.  IMO, two indispensable resources if you’re working your electrical system are Bob Nuckolls’ book, The Aeroelectric Connection, and his forum hosted on the Matt Dralle’s Matronics forums, which covers far more than just electrical systems.  My discussion with Eric turned to LED landing/taxi lights, which he is infinitely familiar with.  I wanted to see if there was a lower cost LED solution to those sold on Aircraft Spruce, Wicks, etc.  Eric recommended the MR16 light, which has many different derivatives, and sent me this specific model pictured below as his recommendation to try out.   As you can see in the pic below, it looks very solid with a robust heat sink & cooling air flow design.

I bought the Soraa MR16, Model # 00235, which is an 11.5-Watt Dimmable LED light.  In addition, this MR16 is a 75 Watt bulb equivalent with 3700 Candlepower.  It produces a 20° narrow flood beam and looks to be perfect as an ancillary landing/taxi light in the nose along with the AeroLED Sunray Plus LED landing light that I picked up about a week ago.  However, at less than $40 off of Amazon, including shipping, it may just work out to be an excellent deal.  Of course I will test the light, configurations, etc. before incorporating it into my nose light design, but for now it looks highly promising.  I’ll report more on it when I get to that stage of the build.

Well, here it goes.  After literally years of wondering, pondering, scheming and hypothesizing as to what I should do for a nose landing light I decided to go with a light that is simple, lightweight, with low power draw … albeit bright.  Notice I didn’t say cheap! 

I finally decided that I didn’t want to mess around with any contraption, mechanical or electro-mechanical device that would move a light from point A into position B so that it could be used to illuminate the runway.  One concern I had with the plans type landing light set-up is that it doesn’t easily allow for incorporating & using wig wag technology… not without some drag penalty.  Over the years I’ve spoke with a number of builders & EZ drivers on this subject, and there is an overwhelming consensus that our Long-EZs are simply difficult to see in the skies, and that we simply need to be as visible as we can possibly get to enhance safety of flight.

Another concern I had was having a single-use light.  I’ve heard many builders, and read many others, discussing having a movable light so that it can be dual-use, serving as both a landing light, then a taxi light.  I really didn’t want to mess around with having to adjust my light to use it as either a landing or taxi light, although I wholeheartedly agree that having the capability for both landing and taxi lights is a valid requirement.

My epiphany finally came from Squadron III’s newsletter, sent out by David Orr (AKA “Beagle”).  Beagle has a beautiful Berkut and guess what he has on the front of it? Two, small, round beautiful lights!  There was my answer!  No drop down lights, no mechanical levers to push or pull, no extra switch to flip . . . the answer was so obvious! Just use two small bright lights, and point one at the appropriate angle for landing, and set the other at the right angle for taxiing . . . or close enough to it.  I’m not overly concerned about the taxi lighting because I have two taxi/wigwag lights designed into the wings.  But by having two small ~2″ lights in the nose it meets all my design criteria: Simple, no moving parts, lightweight, low current draw, minimal drag, and incorporates full-time wig wag capability.

I looked around for a while for an appropriate light to use.  Beagle and I spoke and he gave me some pointers, managing heat being one critical aspect of using nose-mounted landing lights.  I finally decided to stay with my current exterior lighting brand choice by sticking with AeroLEDs.  I ended up buying one of their Sunray Plus LED landing lights.  I figure I’ll test it out & if I like it I’ll simply buy another one to use in tandem.

Before I get into the specific subsystem wiring pages that I’ve completed over the past several days, I wanted to explain my requirement for creating subsystem diagrams for my Wire Book.  Actually, in the spirit of efficiency, and because I think he explains it much more eloquently than I can, I blatantly stole an entry off of Nick Ugolini’s blog that helps expound upon the reasoning of why subsystem diagrams are invaluable tools to have in one’s toolkit when dealing with repairing, upgrading, troubleshooting and diagnosing electrical systems.  Here’s Nick’s sage advice:

The wiring diagrams are absolutely CRITICAL to long term maintenance of the plane and they need to be as complete and clear as possible.   After flying these planes for years, I find most of the maintenance issues in the future will mainly be wiring problems.  Fixing a screw, bushing or engine component is quick and easy.  Finding out why a light or radio stops working is really tough and almost impossible without a well-documented wiring schematic.    The type of connectors, switches, plugs, type of crimper used, wire, etc should be of the highest quality possible, because it will bite you in the butt if you don’t pay really close attending to this critical aspect of the plane.    Of all the work I am doing on the plane, I approach this area with the greatest concern and closest attention to detail possible.    This is why it takes so much time and effort.  I spent 3 hrs yesterday working on just 4 pages of wiring and I am still not done.    I will probably have 30 or 40 drawings.   

Some people approach the electrical draw from the aspect that you should put everything in an area on one page.  An example is the power system should show all components and where they all go (charging, starting, lights, lines to the radios, etc).  This is great for wiring the plane, but doesn’t help as much when you are trouble shooting a sub area of the larger system.  Let’s say you are only working on the alternator part of this system.  

I like drawing the areas out in sub systems.   The alternator system is drawn separately from the starting system or the ignition system.   In the future when you are trouble shooting  problems with the charging system, it is MUCH easier to look at just the system of interest and visually see what is going on.  You don’t have to separate it from a larger drawing with lots of other stuff on it.  It makes wiring the plane more of a pain but is much easier to trace wires.   

Anyone can wire a plane… it is not rocket science and is fairly easy to do.  Run a wire from A to B and you are done. Easy.  I have seen so many planes (certified and experimental) where if you ask the owner for a wiring diagram, you’ll get a blank stare.  I have seen very few wiring diagrams and they were by obsessive compulsive engineer types who really knew the value of having one.   Most builders just wing it.
-Nick Ugolini 

So, with much agreement and in the spirit of Nick’s words, I’m pushing on in my attempt to complete these subsystem wiring diagram pages for my Wire Book.  Since my last post on electrical diagrams I’ve completed the Fuel System, Alarm & Warning Systems, Starting System, and Long Wire Runs wiring diagrams.

Here is the fuel subsystem wiring diagram.

And here is the alarm & warning subsystems diagram.

I apologize if the pages look a little slanted, because they are.  I’m using a Brother printer that is supposed to print 11×17 inch pages, and technically it does do that.  However, it just doesn’t print  the pages straight… or it does rarely let’s say.  It sucks, but it was the only one I could grab in my limited time in the States before heading to the Middle East.

BTW, the long wiring runs is nothing more than a pictorial list of all the wiring runs between the nose/instrument panel area and the hell hole/firewall area so I can account for the amount of long wire purchases I may need to make if I don’t already have enough wire on hand.

Below is the updated list that I shared last week (again, green denotes completed or mature, yellow is currently being worked):

Z.  Z-13/8 Electrical System
–    Switch Configuration
1.  Panel Components
2.  Radio & audio system
3.  Main Bus
4.  Batt Bus
5.  E-Bus
6.  Nose Gear
7.  Pitch & Roll Trim Systems
8.  Lights: LDG, TAXI, NAV, STROBE
9.  Engine Info Management
10. Fuel System
11. Cockpit Lighting
12. Landing Brake
13. Throttle Switches
14. Control Stick Wiring
15. Integrated Back-up Battery System
16. Alarm & Warning Systems
17. Charging System
18. Heater System
19. Electronic Ignition
20. P-Mag Ignition
21. Component Interconnects
22. Starting System
23. Panel, Battery & Avionics Grounds
24. Cockpit, Firewall & Engine Grounds
25. Heated Pitot Tube Wiring
26. Trio Autopilot
30. Long Wire Runs

My buddy Marco finally received the Motion Systems Actuator that I ordered from them at the beginning of May.  All reports from Marco are the fit & finish are excellent.  We’ll most likely have to play around with various spring tensions to lock in the operating parameters for our respective Long-EZs, but of course fine-tuning is expected on any pitch trim system install.

Here are some excellent shots of my completed Vance Atkinson EZ Electric Trim System. Of course the credit goes to both Vance who designed & perfected the system, and Marco who built it to perfection using the plans Vance & other builders supplied us.

Although I have yet to actually test this system yet, I am incredibly pleased & excited to be using this pitch trim system in my bird.  My initial thought is that it was definitely the right choice.

A reoccurring question that I’ve had in my mind for quite some time was simply how to go about labeling all the wires in the Long-EZ to make maintenance, modifications and troubleshooting a heck of a lot easier.  Well, recently–most likely due to my recent task of building all the subsystem wiring book diagrams–that internal “reoccurring” question turned more into a “nagging” question.

So the other day I spent a couple of hours perusing my notes, past emails, various builders’ forums and the Internet to find an answer to my now persistent wire-labeling question.  After a fair amount of research, and doing a short cost-benefit analysis of the amount of time required to label my wires in one of the few old school methods versus acquiring the capability to do it quickly, I realized that having high quality labeled wires wasn’t going to be necessarily cheap.  However, along with high quality labels the one thing I could definitely attain was speed . . . and once you add the ability to produce things a heck of a lot more quickly, with high quality, that simply equates to efficiency in my book. And I am willing to pay for efficiency.

I found a few builders using the K-Sun Bee3-EZ+ label maker (Really?! How can you pass on something that is clearly made for an “EZ”?  It even lists it right in the model number! And it’s EZ to use to boot!).  Now, I already have a P-Touch label maker that I’ve used for countless years, so why in the world do I need another label maker?!  Well, dear friends, this one PRINTS ON SHRINK TUBE!  Ok, this may not be news to you, but it definitely was to me.  Between the 1/8″ & 3/16″ sized shrink tubes, they cover wire gages from 12-22 AWG.  Perfect for covering the vast majority of wires in an airplane build.  Moreover, these shrink tubes come in 5 different color combos.

Thus, after reading online reviews, comparing prices, etc., I went back to my old standby eBay and was able to pick up a new K-Sun Bee3-EZ+ shrink tube label maker for over half the cost less of a new one at a regular online vendor: